“Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.”

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.

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

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.

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

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

And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.

He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.

Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

Childhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of.

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

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.

Love’s action. It isn’t talk and it never has been.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

My show is more storytelling now than it’s ever been. It’s what I’m good at.

Have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains.