Golding Quotes & Sayings

We're not savages. We're English. — William Golding

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

This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun. — William Golding

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

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure. — Kathleen Parker

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

Simon stayed where he was, a small brown image, concealed by the leaves.Even if he shut his eyes, the sow's head still remained like an after-image.The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life. They assured Simon that everything was a bad business. — 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 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. — William Golding

There is, they say, no fool like an old fool. — William Golding

Piggy was a bore; his fat, his ass-mar — William Golding

It was, perhaps, no situation from which to face a charging badger. — William Golding

We musn't let anything happen to Piggy, must we? — William Golding

You'll get back to where you came from. — William Golding

He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again. — William Golding

People don't help much. — William Golding

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing. — 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

A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself. — George Bernard Shaw

There ought to be some mode of life where all love is good, where one love can't compete with another but adds to it. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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

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

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

I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work. — William Golding

Once more, amid the breeze, the shouting, the slanting sunlight on the high mountain, was shed that glamour, that strange invisible light of friendship, adventure and content. — William Golding

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

Life itself is a rickety building — William Golding

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 ... — William Golding

The whole book is posing a question. You think you've won a war - what you've done is finish a war. There was a crime committed in that war the like of which perhaps was never committed in human history. You think about it. — William Golding

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

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder. — William Golding

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

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. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

There is nothing in it of course. Just a feeling. But you can feel as if you're not hunting, but - being hunted, as if something's behind you all the time in the jungle. — William Golding

Melletin jumped up on a barrel beside Ramil. "Brigardians, are you with the Dark Prince?"

"Aye!" shouted his countrymen.

"What about you other men?" Ramil asked, looking across the crowd of faces drawn from all parts of the Empire.

The slave who had challenged him took one look at Yelena, then raised his hand. "I'm in. It seems you might know what you're doing after all."

Ramil grinned. "I can't promise that--but I can promise that I'll buy you a drink if we're still alive by the end of tomorrow! — Julia Golding

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. — 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

Again he lost himself in deep waters. — William Golding

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

He doesn't mind if he dies ... indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it. — William Golding

an incantation of hatred. — William Golding

What else is there to do? — 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

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. — William Golding

What did it mean? A stick sharpened at both ends. What was there in that? — William Golding

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

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 — William Golding

The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth. — William Golding

I don't like the word 'allegorical', I don't like the word 'symbolic' - the word I really like is 'mythic', and people always think that means 'full of lies', whereas of course what it really means is 'full of truth which cannot be told in any other way but a story'. — William Golding

perch on the wall — Julia Golding

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. — William Golding

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

The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life — William Golding

Nerul passed Tashi a cup of hot kava. "I have given thought overnight to your travels and have some suggestions to make. The first is that you should take one of my people with you as a guide, at least for the part of the road that lies through Kandar. Melletin has volunteered. He says he owes you for the lesson you taught him on your first meeting."

Tashi furrowed her brow. "What lesson was that?"

Melletin grinned and touched his forehead. "To wear a helmet when attacking strangers. — Julia Golding

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? — William Golding

My life flies away like a dream: Why should I stay behind? — Julia Golding

I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment. — William Golding

Piggy once more was the centre of social derision so that everyone felt cheerful and normal. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel. — William Golding

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

I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad. — William Golding

I cried out not with hope of an ear but as accepting a shut door, darkness and a shut sky. — William Golding

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest. — William Golding

The Navy's a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, 'Frightfully sorry, old chap.' — William Golding

Ramil met Tashi's eyes with a mischievous look. "Now Wife we have a long voyage ahead of us with no interruptions, no affairs of state to sidetrack us." He brushed his fingers againist the lacings of her neck. "Isn't it time you returned that shirt to its owner? — Julia Golding

He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood and not yet old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward. You could see now that he might make a boxer, as far as width and heaviness of shoulders went, but there was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil. — William Golding

The Fourth Crown Princess of the blue Cresent Islands had sixteen rituals to observe from the moment of waking to when she broke her fast. — Julia Golding

Ram, can't you see it doesn't matter anymore what I do, but you, you're still needed at home. You go. If my people are still there, tell them the truth. Let them rejoice that Fergox took me away before I could do any more damage to my country."

"No, I refuse that mission, Princess. See, you are still ordering me around like a ruler--it's in you, it's what you are meant to be, no matter what others are telling you. I've given my word that I'll only escape with you by my side. So forget about yourself for a moment: if you care anything about me, about the fate of my country and yours, you are coming with me or I don't go."

"But, Ram--"

"You've got my little horse still?"

She nodded.

"I believe that in the Islands it is understood that when you accepted it, you took responsibility for my soul. I'm holding you to that, Tashi. — Julia Golding

Sleep is where we touch what is better left unexamined. There, the whole of life is bundled up, dwindled. There the carefully hoarded and enjoyed personality, our only treasure and at the same time our only defense must die into the ultimate truth of things, the black lightning that splits and destroys all, the positive, unquestionable nothingness. — William Golding

If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued."
"If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway. — William Golding

How can you expect to be rescued if you don't put first things first and act proper? — William Golding

The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly toward a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of the pink rock. — William Golding

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. — 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

They understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought. — 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

You don't really mean that we got to be frightened all the time of nothing? Life," said Piggy expansively, "is scientific, that's what it is. In a year or two when the war's over they'll be traveling to Mars and back. I know there isn't no beast - not with claws and all that, I mean - but I know there isn't no fear, either. — William Golding

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

We'll stick close together, but make no sign we are acquainted. The girls should go ahead so that they get through first. We'll follow close behind to be there for any trouble."

"Don't worry, my dears," said the professor gallantly, "I'll rescue you from any difficulties."

Yelena laughed and kissed the old man on the cheek. "Of course you will. I don't know why we bother with these other men, do you, Tashi?"

"But they are decorative, aren't they?" the Princess replied archly. It was fun to have a girl with whom she could gang up against the boys--she'd never had a friend like that before. "They give us something to look at on the boring stretches of the road." She let her eyes linger on Ramil, who appeared very warm all of a sudden.

Yelena swung herself into the saddle. "My, my, Princess, I didn't know you could flirt."

"I'm learning from a master--or should I say mistress--of that art," Tashi said with a bow. — Julia Golding

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. — William Golding

But nobody else understands about the fire. If someone threw you a rope when you were drowning. If a doctor said take this because if you don't take you'll die - you would, wouldn't you? — 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

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

If you accept life dully, you can go through it moving not among things but among words. — William Golding

And dying is more natural than living, because what could be more unnatural than that panicstricken thing leaping and falling like a last flame beneath the ribs? — William Golding

Where did you say you were from, girl?" Uniloma asked gruffly one morning. The vessel was far out to sea, giving a wide berth to the coastline of western Holt and any bold pirate vessel.

"From Kai."

"And your name?"

"Taoshira." Tashi did not risk giving her title again but neither was she going to lie.

Uniloma clucked in irritation.

"My family and friends call me Tashi."

"I'll call you Tashi then. I'm not using a princess's name for you."

Tashi sighed. There was no point arguing. The truth would come out when they returned to Rama. It would only be an unseemly squabble if she pressed her claim here.

That's if anyone recognizes me, Tashi thought glumly. I'm not sure I'd knowme either. I might have to stand naked before my servants to prove my point.

She smiled at the idea. No, I'm definitely not the same person if I can laugh about that. — Julia Golding

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

They strip-searched me!" he burst out. "Me! Old enough to be their grandfather and they made me stand naked in the road, my things all unpacked in the mud! — Julia Golding

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

It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there. — William Golding

At the very least, I hope it means I will get my Briony back again. I know, I'll hold a party for her--and take her on a pony ride--I think that will be quite in order, if I can be spared from my official duties for the afternoon."

"You're the King," Taris reminded him with a smile.

"But you're my conscience, Taris, you know that."

"Then your conscience says we should keep his highness's current location secret, but an announcement of his escape is most desirable. Therefore, a party is quite in order--if not essential--for the morale of the nation."

"Excellent. I really should promote you, old friend. Only trouble is, there's nowhere to go but down from your office."

"I am well aware of that, Your Majesty. — Julia 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

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery. — William Golding