Bokelskere.no

He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the beginning. But it was frightening: or, more exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here.

As he looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful mare-like buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occured to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was course in the grain like an over-ripe turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all, he thought, why not?

He wished that they were a married couple of ten years' standing. He wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now, but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they meet.

The best books [...] are those that tell you what you know already.