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 GOLDINGHe became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.
More William Golding Quotes
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At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
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And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.
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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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Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
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Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.
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The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.
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I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.
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He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.
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We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.
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There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
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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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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.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
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I do think that art that doesn’t communicate is useless.
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Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It’s as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.
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To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be
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I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
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Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?
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No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.
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The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.
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The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.
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There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.
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Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
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What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
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As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn’t seen him on their box, buy the paperback.
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I’ve come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English.
WILLIAM GOLDING