Reading notes from 'Why I Write', by George Orwell

• Orwell was lonely when young and developed a character that made him unpopular at school. Orwell thinks that his writing ambitions were related to him feeling isolated and undervalued.
• A writer's subject matter is largely determined by the age he lives in.
• Writers carry within them each of the following motives, others less, others more:
  • Egoism, a desire to be remembered, to be talked about.
  • Aesthetic enthusiasm, for the beauty of the world or for words themselves.
  • Historical, A desire to see things as they are and store them for posterity.
  • Political, in the wider sense: A desire to push the world in a certain direction. Even those who think that art has nothing to do with politics are being political in doing so.
• While the first three motives were more active in Orwell, the events of his age pushed him to the political.
• The more we are aware of our political bias, the more we are able to act politically without sacrificing integrity aesthetically or intellectually.
• The writer's job: To reconcile their ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on them.
• In his late years Orwell tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly.
• Writing a book is a struggle, like being sick for a long time.
• Orwell thinks that when he did not write politically, he wrote lifeless books full of decoration and embellishment.