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.
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.
Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That’s what you could say about it.
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.
The Navy’s a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, ‘Frightfully sorry, old chap.’
In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.
![William Golding Quote - 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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/as-soon-as-oliver-twist-is-serialized-people-who-w-683x1024.jpg)
![William Golding Quote - Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That’s what you could say about it.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/every-novel-is-a-biography-well-then-this-is-a-nov-683x1024.jpg)
