“He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.”

Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

Childhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of.

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

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.

I 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.

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?

Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.

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.

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