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.
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?
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.
I’ve come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English.
I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
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.
It wasn’t until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you’ve got to write your own books and nobody else’s, and then everything followed from there.
