There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.
WILLIAM GOLDINGMaybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
More William Golding Quotes
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People don’t help much.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
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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 -
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 -
The water rose further and dressed Simon’s coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble.
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.
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The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!” “Who cares?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.
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How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
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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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A star appeared…and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.
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My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
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We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
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I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.
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At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
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Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
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Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
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If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
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Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.
WILLIAM GOLDING