William Golding Quotes
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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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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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This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
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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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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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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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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
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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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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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Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
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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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As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
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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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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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You'll get back to where you came from.
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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
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I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages.
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I think there might even come a time when I would read Virgil again. Ovid's Metamorphoses, perhaps, not because the music goes round and round and never comes out, but because it's an extraordinary picture of ceaseless change that never comes to an end.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
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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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I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.