Seth > Seth's Quotes

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“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 driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

“It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
― George Orwell

“April the 4th, 1984.
To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man - greetings!”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If God had wanted us to think with our wombs, why did he give us a brain?”
― Clare Luce Booth

“Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forbearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that -- being what it is -- it falls so short of in fact and in deed.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.”
― Ernest Hemingway