The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.
WILLIAM GOLDINGI am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
More William Golding Quotes
-
-
Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The greatest ideas are the simplest.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Worse than madness. Sanity.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Childhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
He doesn’t mind if he dies… indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.
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 -
Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I do think that art that doesn’t communicate is useless.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
We’re not savages. We’re English.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
I’m scared of him,” said Piggy, “and that’s why I know him. If you’re scared of someone you hate him but you can’t stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he’s all right really, an’ then when you see him again; it’s like asthma an’ you can’t breathe.
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