“What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones that passed it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds.”

“You probably know more about life, real life, than most people. You never really know what life is all about until you have suffered and been humbled and beaten down by life. Then it all of a sudden becomes very real. Jesus did not understand what life was going to be like for him, and he was God, until he went off on his own. He also was one of us, a homeless beggar with nowhere to lay his head.”

“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”

“as shedrove me through the hills everything screamed inside ofme, and I kept saying as we drove along(to myself, of course)fucker, it will pass,everything passes,it's all a jokea joke on you”

“I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune.”

“I'm just like that woman really. Or rather, that's what Iused to be like: someone pretending to know everything,hidden away in my own silence”