“I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.”

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.

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.

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.

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.