One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are … - George Orwell

The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually in the past.

لو كنت تشعر باشمئزاز من مذاق الطعام الرديء والجوارب الملتصقة والثياب القذرة, فلا بد أنك تملك فكرة عما هو جيد... لا بد أنك تذكر وقتاً ما كانت الأمور مختلفة.

Of course, fanatical Communists and Russophiles generally can be respected, even if they are mistaken. But for people like ourselves, who suspect that something has gone very wrong with the Soviet Union, I consider that willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual's point of view is really dangerous.