Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [596]

Now that they had a secure hiding-place, almost a home, it did not even seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time. What mattered was that the room over the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 596

Note

‘To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it’ — the room functions as pure possibility, an internalised sanctuary whose existence, rather than use, is the comfort. ‘A pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk’ extends the paperweight’s microcosm.