"There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means."

"The Lottery, with its weekly payout of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the Proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of Proles for whom the Lottery was the principal, if not the only reason for staying alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts and lucky amulets..."

"Pictures and posters on every corner, reminding citizens of Oceania that Big Brother is always watching them."

"Down in the street, little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere."

"Helicopters skimming down between the roofs, a sign of the police patrol, snooping into people's windows."

"Never…quite enough to eat, one never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been bad and rickety, rooms under-heated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured… nothing cheap and plentiful. Decaying, dingy cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories."

"Marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose…[and] permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another."