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 GOLDINGIf 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.
More William Golding Quotes
-
-
I don’t think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we’re concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
WILLIAM GOLDING -
At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
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 not savages. We’re English.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.
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 -
Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.
WILLIAM GOLDING