I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI hope my books make statements about our general condition.
WILLIAM GOLDINGWe just got to go on, that’s all. That’s what grownups would do.
WILLIAM GOLDINGWe’re not savages. We’re English.
WILLIAM GOLDINGThis is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun.
WILLIAM GOLDINGEvery 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.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI 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 GOLDINGSleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHow can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
WILLIAM GOLDINGI am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.
WILLIAM GOLDINGPeople don’t help much.
WILLIAM GOLDINGTogether, 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 GOLDINGHow would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
WILLIAM GOLDINGThey walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
WILLIAM GOLDINGChildhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of.
WILLIAM GOLDINGThe 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 GOLDINGthe conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
WILLIAM GOLDING