W Golding Quotes & Sayings

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 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

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

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

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

Life itself is a rickety building — William Golding

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

Worse than madness. Sanity. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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