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.
WILLIAM GOLDINGAn 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.
More William Golding Quotes
-
-
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
One’s intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
It may be — I hope it is — redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
People don’t help much.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.
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 -
You’ll get back to where you came from.
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 -
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.
WILLIAM GOLDING -
His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.
WILLIAM GOLDING