They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI 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.
More William Golding Quotes
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I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.
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 -
We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
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 -
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 -
The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don’t understand.
WILLIAM 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 -
Worse than madness. Sanity.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.
WILLIAM GOLDING