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.
WILLIAM GOLDINGPhilosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
More William Golding Quotes
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He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
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There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.
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I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
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How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
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To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be
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Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
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I’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.
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The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!” “Who cares?
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The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.
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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.
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Ralph… would treat the day’s decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.
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People don’t help much.
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They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
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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.
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Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.
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The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers….Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
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You’ll get back to where you came from.
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Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
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It may be — I hope it is — redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.
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Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
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The mask was a thing on it’s own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.
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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
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We’re not savages. We’re English.
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What kind of human person has a favorite eraser?
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If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
WILLIAM GOLDING