"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a ...
Good writing is like a windowpane.
More George Orwell quotes
"Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot ch...
"To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never l...
"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not ...
"From ... the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. ... I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousnes...
"Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims one turns as if it were instinctivel...
"Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
"I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.
"I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age ...
"If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
"Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by peo...
"The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head,...
"He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a...
"Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the un...