... they don't sell tickets to the past.

Every act of perception has an emotional coloring.

A poet cannot be a Party member ... without paying the price.

And keep as few things as possible, so that you don't have to fear for them. Give them up without a struggle-because otherwise the humiliation will poison your heart. They will take them away from you in a fight, and trying to hold onto your property will only leave you with a bloodied mouth ... But by owning things and trembling about their fate aren't you forfeiting the rare opportunity of observing and understanding?

... people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth.

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power-he's free again.

Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.

If you ever get twenty-five years for nothing, if you find yourself wearing four number patches on your clothes, holding your hands permanently behind your back, submitting to searches morning and evening, working until you are utterly exhausted, dragged into the cooler whenever someone denounces you, trodden deeper and deeper into the ground-from the hole you're in, the fine words of the great humanists will sound like the chatter of the well-fed and free.

Let all of us who shared the prison soup meet again in better times!

The events were trivial, but for the first time in my life I learned to look at them through a magnifying glass.