“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.”

I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers….Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.

What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.

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.

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.

There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

You’ll get back to where you came from.

We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

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.’

He doesn’t mind if he dies… indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it.

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

While I am on, I can discipline myself to that extent. When I am off, I can’t discipline myself at all. On the other hand, when I am off, there are so many things I like doing, it doesn’t really matter.

They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.

Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don’t understand.

However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won’t tell.

The other ants follow the path immediately in order to benefit from the finding and continue to do so as long as the supply is rich.

I like to be in a huis clos, as the French say – in one place. It’s something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!

In that state you’ve immediately raised the mind of compassion, because if nothing is in, everything is in, and you are now free to experience yourself as the world.

You must know that when you ‘hail’ Mary, she immediately greets you!

That’s immediately how I gauge how healthy a city is-by the amount of tags. It’s just in direct competition with advertising. It’s still one of the last things that hasn’t been corrupted.

Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments.

There you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth.