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

We just got to go on, that’s all. That’s what grownups would do.

We’re not savages. We’re English.

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.

How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

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.

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.

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.

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‘feeling’ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

Most of the time, I don’t see the great catch or the long run. What I’m looking at is how the other team defended it.

It wasn’t a being-with-each-other kind of close. We all went our own ways.

Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.

My problem is I am Christian, so I think other people must have success, too; it’s not about me.

I think going through ‘Hairspray’ and other projects helped me learn about the business and life in general.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?