Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [259]

His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he could keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at the next table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely he would be in the cellars of the Ministry of Love within three days, but a cigarette end must not be wasted. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 259

Note

The juxtaposition of pending vaporization and a cigarette end that ‘must not be wasted’ — the mundane frugality sitting beside mortal terror without irony — captures the texture of life under scarcity, where bodily habits override even the awareness of death.