William Golding Quotes & Sayings

The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off. — William Golding

Father Adam!"
But the little man said nothing, did nothing. He stood still holding the letter, and there was not even a change of expression in his face; and this might be, thought Jocelin, because he has no face at all. He is the same all round like the top of a clothespeg. He spoke, laughing down at the baldness with its fringe of nondescript hair.
"I ask your pardon, Father Adam. One forgets you are there so easily!" And then, laughing aloud in joy and love - "I shall call you Father Anonymous! — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

Thought was a valuable thing, that got results. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages. — William Golding

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do. — William Golding

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

Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in! — William Golding

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. — William Golding

[F]ear can't hurt you any more than a dream. There aren't any beasts to be afraid of on this island ... Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies! — William Golding

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

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. — William Golding

A battle cheapens life and I find life cheap enough already — William Golding

I hope my books make statements about our general condition. — William Golding

Life itself is a rickety building — William Golding

I find it very difficult to talk here now because I'm watching the sea all the time. The sea always makes me watch it all the time. I've spent hours and hours not just on the sea but just watching wave after wave come in. If it's an image of anything, I think it's an image of our own unconscious, the unconscious of our own minds ... or you can put it the other way around, and that is that we have a sea in us. After all, we are sea creatures that learnt to walk on the land, are we not? And perhaps one way or another we go back to it. Every night when we dream we go back into that kind of depths, and that kind of beauty and monstrosity and mystery. So really the sea is not a single image, it can really image almost anything that the human mind can discover. — William Golding

He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were. — William Golding

Allow me to tell you, Mr Taylor", said I, but quietly as the occassion demanded, "that one gentleman does not rejoice at the misfortune of another in public". — William Golding

Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel. — William Golding

Grownups know things, said Piggy. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be alright
They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose
They'd build a ship
The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life.
They wouldn't quarrel
Or break my specs
Or talk about a beast
If only they could get a message to us, cried Ralph desperately. If only they could send us something grownup ... a sign or something. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there ... — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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

I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller. — William Golding

I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's all right really, an' then when you see him again; it's like asthma an' you can't breathe ... — William Golding

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

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. — William Golding

There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it. — William Golding

-I got the conch!" --Piggy (in Lord of the Flies), attempting Democracy — William Golding

I got this to say. you are acting like a crowd of kids. — William Golding

Here at last was the imagined but never fully realized place leaping into real life. — William Golding

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps? — William Golding

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

Piggy was a bore; his fat, his ass-mar and his matter-of-fact ideas were dull, — William Golding

It seems to me that we do live in two worlds ... there is this physical one, which is coherant, and there is the spiritual one, which to the average man with his flashes of religious experience, is very often incoherant. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or not all the time, is a vital one, and is what living is like. — William Golding

Out of the firelight everything was black and silver, black island, rocks and trees carved cleanly out of the sky and silver river with a flashing light rippling back and forth along the lip of the fall. — William Golding

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 — William Golding

They would reach the castle some time; and the chief would have to go forward. — William Golding

I cannot convince myself that my mental capacities are important enough to justify either the good or the harm they started. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

What I mean is... maybe it's only us... — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

islanded in a sea of meaningless color, — William Golding

Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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 ... — William Golding

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. — William Golding

For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse. — William Golding

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

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? — William Golding

The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers but won't tell. — William Golding

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

His manual of heaven and hell lay open before me, and I could perceive my nothingness in this scheme. — William Golding

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

As for the fear, you'll have to put up with that like the rest of us. — William Golding

The best novels, the writer's imagination becomes the reader's reality. — William Golding

The way towards simplicity is through outrage. — William Golding

I spit upon your God! — William Golding

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

Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised eighteen inches over the black rivets you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut in a bone box and trying to fasten myself on the white paper. The rivets join us together and yet for all the passion we share nothing but our sense of division. — William Golding

With an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy. — William Golding

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

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback. — William Golding

You let the fire out. — William Golding

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

Bit by bit [the Second World War] really changed my view of what people were capable of, and therefore what human nature was. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

What kind of human person has a favorite eraser? — William Golding

I am here; and here is nowhere in particular. — William Golding

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

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

We have to face it at last. We're not all human. — William Golding

I must say that anyone who passed through those years [of World War II] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head. — William Golding

Which is better
to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill? — William Golding

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? — William Golding

A star appeared ... and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness. — William Golding

Friends will hand over anything that is needed and think nothing of it! — William Golding

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 — William Golding

Perhaps there is a beast...
maybe it's only us. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

The sting of ashes in his eyes, tiredness, fear, enraged him. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

Are we savages or what? — William Golding

He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up. — William Golding

Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars. — William Golding

No human endeavour can ever be wholly good ... it must always have a cost. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon. — William Golding

I think are foolish to pretend they are equal to men,they are far superior and always have been. -William Golding — William Golding