What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
WILLIAM GOLDINGWorse than madness. Sanity.
More William Golding Quotes
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We’re not savages. We’re English.
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Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?
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He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.
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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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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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Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.
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You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.
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They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
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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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You’ll get back to where you came from.
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Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.
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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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If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
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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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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.
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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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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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How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
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I do think that art that doesn’t communicate is useless.
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This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun.
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There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
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Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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A star appeared…and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.
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Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
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If I blow the conch and they don’t come back; then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued.” “If you don’t blow, we’ll soon be animals anyway.
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The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.
WILLIAM GOLDING