Quote of the day

"One of [Orwell's] most enduring interests was in the cultivation of pure and direct English, where his concern almost matched the intensity of Swift's. Sixty years later I remember resolving that the essay 'Politics and the English Language' (1946) should be a kind of touchstone (allowing for some Orwellian quirks) for my own writing, a memory clouded by the necessary admission that I have not used it often enough."

-- Frank Kermode, reviewing Orwell in 'Tribune': 'As I Please' and Other Writings 1943-7, in New York Review of Books, June 14, 2007