“I 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.”

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.

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.

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.

Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.

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.

To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

Are we savages or what?

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

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.

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

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?

I hope my books make statements about our general condition.

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.

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

Which is better — to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better — to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

This is a fierce bad rabbit; look at his savage whiskers, and his claws and his turned-up tail.

I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.

I went into a restaurant one night and ordered lobster, and the waiter brought me one with a claw missing.

I called him over and told him about it. He told me that in the back there’s a tank they keep the lobsters in and while they’re in there, they fight and sometimes one loses a claw. I told him ‘then bring me a winner.’

He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.

Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.

You just came wild and sexy all over my hand and even left some claw marks on my back to prove it. Don’t go getting shy on me now. ‘Cause baby, before the night is over you will be naked in my bed.