The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers….Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
WILLIAM GOLDINGIf faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
More William Golding Quotes
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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 -
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 -
Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.
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 -
We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Life’s scientific, but we don’t know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
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 -
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I know there isn’t no beast-not with claws and all that, I mean-but I know there isn’t no fear, either.” Piggy paused. “Unless-” Ralph moved restlessly. “Unless what?” “Unless we get frightened of people.
WILLIAM GOLDING