William Golding quotes
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“At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (2013). “The Spire: With an introduction by John Mullan”, p.21, Faber & Faber
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“No human endeavour can ever be wholly good... it must always have a cost.”
-- 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 -
“I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.”
-- William GoldingSource : YouTube Chanel "AbecedariusRex"/ "Golding's Introduction to Lord of the Flies", www.youtube.com. May 22, 2010.
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“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (1954). “Lord of the Flies”, p.181, Penguin
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“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”
-- William Golding -
“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”
-- William Golding -
“He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.”
-- William Golding -
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“Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.”
-- William Golding -
“Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.”
-- William Golding -
“Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.”
-- William GoldingSource : Jack I. Biles, William Golding (1970). “Talk: conversations with William Golding”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
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“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 Golding -
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“Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.”
-- William Golding -
“Before the Second World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society... but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another... I must say that 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 GoldingSource : "The Hot Gates". Book by William Golding, 1965.
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“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
-- William Golding -
“Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.”
-- William Golding -
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“Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”
-- William Golding -
“The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (2013). “Lord of the Flies : Text , Criticism , Giossary and Notes”, p.96, Al Manhal
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“If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?”
-- William Golding -
“He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.”
-- William Golding -
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“The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.”
-- William Golding -
“the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.”
-- William Golding -
“The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers but won't tell.”
-- William Golding -
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“The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”
-- William Golding -
“Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast. The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this? I don't know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. [...] Ralph shouted. Hear him! He's got the conch! What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us. Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum.”
-- William Golding -
“They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.”
-- William Golding -
“How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?”
-- William Golding -
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“Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.”
-- William Golding -
“We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.”
-- William Golding -
“And I've been wearing specs since I was three.”
-- William Golding -
“The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers....Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.”
-- William Golding -
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“There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.”
-- William Golding -
“A star appeared...and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.”
-- William Golding -
“There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.”
-- 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 -
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“It is at least scientifically respectable to postulate that at the centre of a black hole the laws of nature no longer apply. Since most scientists are just a bit religious and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.”
-- William Golding -
“How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (1954). “Lord of the Flies”, p.57, Penguin
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“Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.”
-- William Golding -
“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?”
-- William Golding -
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“What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (2013). “Rites of Passage: With an introduction by Robert McCrum”, p.156, Faber & Faber
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“Childhood is a disease - a sickness that you grow out of.”
-- William Golding -
“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
-- William Golding -
“Couldn't a fire outrun a galloping horse?”
-- William Golding -
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“Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?”
-- 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 -
“I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.”
-- William Golding -
“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.'”
-- William Golding -
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“I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there...”
-- William GoldingSource : "The World and the Book: A Study of Modern Fiction". Book by Gabriel Josipovici, 1971.
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“The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.”
-- 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 -
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“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 -
“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 -
“The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble...”
-- William Golding -
“But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.”
-- William Golding -
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“I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.”
-- William Golding -
“Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
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“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.”
-- William Golding -
“We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.”
-- William GoldingSource : WILLIAM GOLDING (1979). “DARKNESS VISIBLE”
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“Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”
-- William Golding -
“There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.”
-- William Golding -
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“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 -
“Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.”
-- William Golding -
“They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate.”
-- William Golding -
“The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood—and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition.”
-- William Golding -
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“Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.”
-- William Golding -
“Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!”
-- William Golding -
“I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (2013). “To the Ends of the Earth”, p.414, Faber & Faber
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“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 -
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“Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.”
-- William Golding -
“I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.”
-- William Golding -
“They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten.”
-- William Golding -
“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?”
-- William Golding -
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“I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.”
-- William Golding -
“What kind of human person has a favorite eraser?”
-- William Golding -
“Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.”
-- William Golding -
“I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.”
-- William GoldingSource : William Golding (1983). “Lord of the Flies”, p.211, Penguin
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“Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.”
-- William Golding -
“You'll get back to where you came from.”
-- William Golding -
“He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.”
-- William Golding -
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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.”
-- William Golding -
“Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.”
-- William Golding -
“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”
-- William Golding -
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”
-- William GoldingSource : W. Meitcke, William Golding (1984). “William Golding's Lord of the Flies”, p.49, Barron's Educational Series
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“It 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 Golding -
“We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.”
-- William Golding -
“He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.”
-- William Golding -
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“If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued." "If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.”
-- William Golding -
“The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!" "Who cares?”
-- William Golding -
“I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless—" Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?" "Unless we get frightened of people.”
-- William Golding -
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“The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.”
-- William Golding -
“This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.”
-- William Golding -
“The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.”
-- 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 -
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