William Golding Quotes
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They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten.
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I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.
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This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
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As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
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But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.
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He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.
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We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
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The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.
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A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.
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Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.
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The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.
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My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
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Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.
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What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
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His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.
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Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?
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Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
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We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
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Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.
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Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast. The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this? I don't know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. [...] Ralph shouted. Hear him! He's got the conch! What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us. Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum.
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Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
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Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don't think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.