“Everyone who is not happy must be shot.”

“Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.”

“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. Its diplomatic pain. Its television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. ...”

“Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were vo...”

“This is a war," Lemas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing...”

“I would say that since the war, our methods-out and those of the opposition-have become much the same. I mean you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's 'policy...”

“Sometimes, insatiable curiosity and compassion are all that life requires of us.”

“Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.”

“If spectacle is lacking in everyday life, it may be because we have forgotten where and how to look.”

“Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.”

“If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me.”

“Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.”

“Time limits tend to turn everything predictable and mundane into a novelty.”

“Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experiencebuying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hellobecome new all over again.”

“Progress in science and technology is real, but it builds on past truths without rejecting them. Computers dont have to be re-invented in order to keep getting better; innovations expand what they ...”