William Golding's 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

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

Latin, as we all know, ultimately broke down into Spanish, Italian, French, and so on. One wonders whether there will be an imperial parallel with English breaking down into, shall we say, North American, European, Australian, and so on. On the other hand, there is this immense, inward-driving influence of radio and television that is bringing us all back together. One could say it's a fight between the two: a fight between regionalism and the standardization through communication. — William Golding

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet. — 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

I thought Lord of the Flies was one of the great rip-offs of our time. Complete steal from A High Wind In Jamaica. He just literally lifted the entire theme, plot, and virtually characterization from A High Wind In Jamaica, turned them into a bunch of small boys and placed it on an island. Otherwise it's precisely the same novel. — Truman Capote

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

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 — 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

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. — 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

Piggy took off his shoes and socks, ranged them carefully on the ledge and tested the water with one toe. 'It's hot!' 'What did you expect?' 'I didn't expect nothing. My auntie-' 'Sucks to your auntie! — 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

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

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer. — William Golding

Maybe," he said hesitantly, "maybe there is a beast." [ ... ] "What I mean is, maybe it's only us. — William Golding

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

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

As long as there's light we're brave enough — 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

We think we know."
"Know? That's worse than an atom bomb, and always was. — 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

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

There have been so many interpretations of the story that I'm not going to choose between them. Make your own choice. They contradict each other, the various choices. The only choice that really matters, the only interpretation of the story, if you want one, is your own. Not your teacher's, not your professor's, not mine, not a critic's, not some authority's. The only thing that matters is, first, the experience of being in the story, moving through it. Then any interpretation you like. If it's yours, then that's the right one, because what's in a book is not what an author thought he put into it, it's what the reader gets out of it. — William Golding

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

What's in a book, is not what an author thought he put into it, it's what the reader get out of it. — 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

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

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

Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate. — William Golding

Ideas for my first experiments in human aggression came from discussions we had in a research seminar about William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' — Philip Zimbardo

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

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

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. — William Golding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The moon was through to the sunset side of the gap, but its light was hardly noticeable on the earth for the ruddy brilliance of the firelight. — William Golding

Listen, Ralph. Never mind what's sense. That's gone
— 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

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

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

If you don't change your hairstyle because it's mostly fallen out and you don't shave, you've no cause to go chasing yourself in a mirror. — William Golding

I dunno, Ralph. We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grown-ups would do. — William Golding

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

-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. — William Golding

The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — William Golding

It's simpler to believe in a miracle. — William Golding

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness. — William Golding

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. — William Golding

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

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

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

Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It's as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider. — 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

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

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

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