William Golding Quotes - Page 3

Worse than madness. Sanity.

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.

To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.

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?

The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.

We're not savages. We're English.

Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.

Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

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.

One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.

Are we savages or what?

I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless—" Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?" "Unless we get frightened of people.

I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?

It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.

What kind of human person has a favorite eraser?

Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.