Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
WILLIAM GOLDINGKill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
WILLIAM GOLDINGThe 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.’
WILLIAM GOLDINGthe conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
WILLIAM GOLDINGSleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
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.
WILLIAM GOLDINGNo human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.
WILLIAM GOLDINGIn 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 GOLDINGThere were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
WILLIAM GOLDINGPercival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI’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.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.
WILLIAM GOLDINGLife should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
WILLIAM GOLDINGAs soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn’t seen him on their box, buy the paperback.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHe found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.
WILLIAM GOLDINGAn orotundity, which I define as Nobelitis a pomposity in which one is treated as representative of more than oneself by someone conscious of representing more than himself.
WILLIAM GOLDING