Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
WILLIAM GOLDINGOnly one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
WILLIAM GOLDINGIt wasn’t until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you’ve got to write your own books and nobody else’s, and then everything followed from there.
WILLIAM GOLDINGIf faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
WILLIAM GOLDINGThe 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.’
WILLIAM GOLDINGAre we savages or what?
WILLIAM GOLDINGBut forgiveness must not only be given but received also.
WILLIAM GOLDINGBeethoven 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 GOLDINGWhich is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
WILLIAM GOLDINGIf faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?
WILLIAM GOLDINGThe candle-buds opened their wide white flowers….Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHow would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
WILLIAM GOLDINGMaybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
WILLIAM GOLDINGArt is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.
WILLIAM GOLDINGRalph 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.
WILLIAM GOLDINGThe greatest ideas are the simplest.
WILLIAM GOLDINGPeople don’t help much.
WILLIAM GOLDING