You’ll get back to where you came from.
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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There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.
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An orotundity, which I define as Nobelitis a pomposity in which one is treated as representative of more than oneself by someone conscious of representing more than himself.
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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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Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
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They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
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I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
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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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Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
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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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This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun.
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The greatest pleasure is not – say – sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity – well, that’s the job of the writer.
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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.
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Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.
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The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.
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We’re not savages. We’re English.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
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Are we savages or what?
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No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.
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I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.
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We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
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One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
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Which is better — to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better — to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
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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.
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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