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 GOLDINGThe skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won’t tell.
More William Golding Quotes
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People don’t help much.
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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
WILLIAM GOLDING -
He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
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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.’
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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 -
I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.
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Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
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Worse than madness. Sanity.
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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.
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Are we savages or what?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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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?
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And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.
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Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
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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