The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
WILLIAM GOLDINGLife should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
More William Golding Quotes
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I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That’s so many pages longhand.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
An orotundity, which I define as Nobelitis a pomposity in which one is treated as representative of more than oneself by someone conscious of representing more than himself.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The greatest pleasure is not – say – sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity – well, that’s the job of the writer.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
What kind of human person has a favorite eraser?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.
WILLIAM GOLDING