8 quotes
There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer.
Charles Dickens (1939)
Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops.
The Prevention of Literature (1946)
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of 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.
The outstanding, unmistakable mark of Dickens's writing is the unnecessary detail.
Charles Dickens (1939)
I am a writer. The impulse of every writer is to "keep out of politics". What he wants is to be left alone so that he can go on writing books in peace.
Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party (1938)
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.