Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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
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Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
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 -
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 -
Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
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 -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING






