William Golding Quotes

Which is better - to have rules and agree or to hunt and kill? ... law and rescue or hunting and breaking things up?

The crucifixion should never be depicted. It is a horror to be veiled.

I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.

Lying there in the darkness, he knew he was an outcast. 'Cos I had some sense.

The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life.

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

I have walked by stalls in the market-place where books, dog-eared and faded from their purple, have burst with a white hosanna. I have seen people crowned with a double crown, holding in either hand the crook and flail, the power and the glory. I have understood how the scar be­comes a star, I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal. My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer over my shoulder.

Fat lot of good we are," said Ralph. "Three blind mice.

For a small island, the place is remarkably diverse. Writers tend to see things from their own points of view, looking in one direction very much.

My darkness reaches out and fumbles at a typewriter with its tongs. Your darkness reaches out with your tongs and grasps a book. There are twenty modes of change, filter and translation between us. What an extravagant coincidence it would be if the exact quality, the translucent sweetness of her cheek, the very living curve of bone between the eyebrow and hair should survive the passage! How can you share the quality of my terror in the blacked-out cell when I can only remember it and not re-create it for myself? No. Not with you. Or only with you, in part. For you were not there.

They knew very well why he hadn't: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.

Who would sharpen a point aginst the darkness of the world?

I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English.

But for all the feet that had trodden it, it remained ordinary dust, which seemed to make everything much sadder.

People don't help much.

I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.

... what makes things break up like they do?"
Piggy rubbed his glasses slowly and thought. When he understood how far Ralph had gone towards accepting him he flushed pinkly with pride.
"I dunno, Ralph. I expect it's him."
"Jack?"
"Jack." A taboo was evolving round that word too.
Ralph nodded solemnly.
"Yes," he said, "I suppose it must be.

We need an assembly, not for cleverness, but for setting things straight.

What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?

They always been making trouble, haven't they?"
The voice came near his shoulder and sounded anxious.
"We can do without 'em. We'll be happier now, won't we?

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.

Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure ...

It's simpler to believe in a miracle.

The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.

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.

I was the only boy in our school what had asthma," said the fat boy with a touch of pride. "And I've been wearing specs since I was three.

The crying went on, breath after breath, and seemed to sustain him upright as if he were nailed to it.

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

If you were a chief, you had to grab at a decision.

Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.

I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work. I think this is very true of English writers, but perhaps not so true of French writers, who seem to read each other passionately, extensively, and endlessly, and who then talk about it to each other - which is splendid.

The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the blood.

I'm against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing what he does. I'd almost prefer the word 'craftsman'. He's like one of those old-fashioned ship builders who conceived the build of the boat in their mind and after that touched every single piece that went into the boat.

The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.

Then you have people coming up like Malcolm Bradbury, a relatively young writer who deals with the academic scene and deals with it, I think, brilliantly.

The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble ...

What they might become in darkness nobody cared to think.

Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

The conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

I suppose drama can either take the place of a novel or can be very closely allied with it. It's quite customary to turn a successful novel into a film or a television series because you can dramatize and pictorialize a novel.

The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!"
"Who cares?

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.

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.

Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.

Other people could stand up and speak to an assembly, apparently, without that dreadful feeling of pressure of personality; could say what they would as though they were speaking to only one person

A single drop of water that had escaped Piggy's fingers now flashed on the delicate curve like a star.

If only one had time to think!

Sucks to your ass-mar!

I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.

I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.

islanded in a sea of meaningless color,

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.

The pause was only long enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be.

Then the clouds opened and let down the rain like a waterfall. The water bounded from the mountain-top, tore leaves and branches from the trees, poured like a cold shower over the straggling heap on the sand. Presently the heap broke up and the figures broke away. Only the beast lay still, a few yards from the sea. Even in the rain they could see how small it was; and already its blood was staining the sand

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

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That's what you could say about it.

The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid nearer and nearer the sill of the world.

The officer grinned cheerfully at Ralph.
'We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something?'
Ralph nodded.
The officer inspected the little scarecrow in front of him. The kid needed a bath, a haircut, a nose-wipe and a good deal of ointment.
'Nobody killed, I hope? Any dead bodies?'
'Only two. And they've gone.'
The officer leaned down and looked closely at Ralph.
'Two? Killed?'
Ralph nodded again. Behind him, the whole island was shuddering with flame. The officer knew, as a rule, when people were telling the truth. He whistled softly.

Which is better
to be a pack of painted niggers like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is

It's like those nights when I was a kid, lying awake thinking the darkness would go on forever. And I couldn't go back to sleep because of the dream of the whatever it was in the cellar coming out of the corner. I'd lie in the hot, rumpled bed, hot burning hot, trying to shut myself away and know that there were three eternities before the dawn. Everything was the night world, the other world where everything but good could happen, the world of ghosts and robbers and horrors, of things harmless in the daytime coming to life, the wardrobe, the picture in the book, the story, coffins, corpses, vampires, and always squeezing, tormenting darkness, smoke thick. And I'd think of anything because if I didn't go on thinking I'd remember whatever it was in the cellar down there, and my mind would go walking away from my body and go down three stories defenceless, down the dark stair past the tall, haunted clock, through the whining door, down the terrible steps to where the coffin ends were crushed in the walls of the cellar – and I'd be held helpless on the stone floor, trying to run back, run away, climb up----

I wish my auntie was here."
"I wish my father.. O, what's the use?

He argued unconvincingly that they would let him alone, perhaps even make an outlaw of him. But then the fatal unreasoning knowledge came to him again. The breaking of the conch and the death of Piggy and Simon lay over the island like a vapor. These painted savages would go further and further. Then there was that indefinable connection between himself and Jack; who therefore would never let him alone; never.

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's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins. Henry

What else is there to do?

This was a savage whose image refused to blend with that ancient picture of a boy in shorts and a shirt.

However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

He walked slowly into the middle of the clearing and looked steadily at the skull that gleamed as white as ever the conch had done and seemed to jeer at him cynically An inquisitive ant was busy in one of the eye sockets but otherwise the thing was lifeless. Or was it?

Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.

The thing is
fear can't hold you any more than a dream ...

I stood, in shame and confusion, seeing for the first time despite my anger a different picture of Evie in her life-long struggle to be clean and sweet. It was as if this object of frustration and desire had suddenly acquired the attributes of a person rather than a thing...

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers ... Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.

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

They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned.

You don't even care enough about us to hate us, do you?

The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to novelists by the dozen.

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

I only wanted to keep up a fire!

But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.

This day promised, like the others, to be a sunbath under a blue dome.

I'm frightend. Of us. I want to go home. O God I to go home." "It's was an accident," said Piggy stubbornly,"and that's that." He touched Ralph's bare shoulder and Ralph shuddered at the human contact.

We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

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.

For if humanity has a future on this planet of a hundred million years, it is unthinkable that it should spend those aeons in a ferment of national self-satisfaction and chauvinistic idiocies.

I suppose I'd have to say that my favourite author is Homer. After Homer's Ilaid, I'd name The Odyssey, and then I'd mention a number of plays of Euripides.

Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch.

The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.

Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured mar

While I am on, I can discipline myself to that extent. When I am off, I can't discipline myself at all. On the other hand, when I am off, there are so many things I like doing, it doesn't really matter.

As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.

-No, not it...I mean...what makes things break up like they do?-
Piggy rubbed his glasses slowly and thought. When he understood how Ralph had gone towards accepting him he flushed pinkly with pride.
-I donnot, Ralph. I expect it's him.-
-Jack?-
-Jack- A taboo was evolving round that word too.

So the last part, the bit we can all talk about, is kind of deciding on the fear.
We've got to talk about this fear and decide there's nothing in it.

powerless and raged without knowing why.

I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.

Was it a good --" The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge. Sam twisted and the obscene word shot out of him. "-- dance?"
Memory of the dance that none of them bad attended shook all four boys convulsively.
"We left early.

Johnny, yawning still, burst into noisy tears and was slapped by Bill till he choked on them.