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 GOLDINGThe writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.
More William Golding Quotes
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The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won’t tell.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.
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 -
In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
We just got to go on, that’s all. That’s what grownups would do.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers….Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
WILLIAM GOLDING