A Quote by Christopher Hitchens

Read with care, George Orwell's diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

Christopher Hitchens

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Best Care Diaries Enrich Everyday Experience George Greatly His How Known Material Novels Orwell Our Polemics Raw Raw Material Read Some Understanding Years

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Christopher Hitchens
American - Author
April 13, 1949 - December 15, 2011

George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus the death' or 'life minus the breathing'.

Gideon Haigh

One of the best and most challenging books about Orwell is by the socialist literary critic Raymond Williams. As a critic - and, in some ways, as a figure, at least within the academy - Williams was what England had in the generation after Orwell, and toward the end of his life, he became more critical of his predecessor.

Keith Gessen

I started understanding William Blake and George Orwell more and more. It's amazing how we go to school when we're so young, read all of these books, just trying to memorize them. When you start to live, you don't have to memorize anything.

Benjamin Clementine

Writer George Orwell confessed he found something "deeply appealing" about Adolf Hitler. Where Martha Dodd was struck by Hitler's "weak, soft face," Orwell discerned "a pathetic dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs." All this is a reminder that psychopaths have been known to possess engaging qualities, and that Hitler was no less repellent for not sporting fangs.

Brad Marchand

For many, the recent disclosure of massive warrantless surveillance programs of all citizens by the Obama administration has brought back memories of George Orwell's '1984.' Another Orwell book seems more apt as the White House and its allies try to contain the scandal: 'Animal Farm.'

Jonathan Turley

The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle?

Craig Ferguson

I think that the basement where Orwell washed dishes in Paris was his first lesson in anti-humbug - and part of the lesson is that you have to keep renewing it. And Orwell did that.

Keith Gessen

I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.

Aravind Adiga

It wasn't until my teenage years that a book really left a mark, and that was George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' It was on the syllabus at school when I was about 16, and I went on to read more of his books. It was the height of the Cold War, so a lot of the messages really resonated at the time.

John Niven

What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism.

David Blunkett

George Orwell once blamed the demise of the English language on politics. It's quite possible he never read a prospectus.

Arthur Levitt Jr

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

W. H. Auden

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.

Atul Gawande

Long ago, when I was in higher secondary school in Delhi, I read an essay by George Orwell in which he said there was a voice in his head that put into words everything he was seeing. I realised I did that, too, or maybe I started doing it in imitation.

Amitava Kumar

He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

Cyril Connolly

Who are these evil ones? In 1984, the evil one was called Goldstein. Orwell was writing a grim parody. But these people running the United States mean what they say. If I were a teacher, I would recommend that all my students very hurriedly read most of Orwell's books, especially 1984 and Animal Farm, because then they'd begin to understand the world we live in.

John Pilger

A Quote by Christopher Hitchens

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