William Golding Quotes

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest ...

We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.

He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the pe...

I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.

Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bun...

It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and ...

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get p...

I think are foolish to pretend they are equal to men,they are far superior and always have been. -Wi...

Allow me to tell you, Mr Taylor," said I, but quietly as the occasion demanded, "that one gentleman ...

Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.

I've always been puzzled, and am still at this moment in a state of confusion, between the imaginati...

I'm against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing wh...

Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like...

It seems to me that we do live in two worlds... there is this physical one, which is coherant, and t...

I don't like the word 'allegorical', I don't like the word 'symbolic' - the word I really like is 'm...

Sleep is where we touch what is better left unexamined. There, the whole of life is bundled up, dwin...

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.

I got this to say. You're acting like a crowd of kids.

As for the fear, you'll have to put up with that like the rest of us.

Life itself is a rickety building

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men they are far superior and always have bee...

His manual of heaven and hell lay open before me, and I could perceive my nothingness in this scheme...

He doesn't mind if he dies... indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welco...

It's simpler to believe in a miracle.

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

I tell you, money can't build your spire for you. Build it of gold and it would simply sink deeper.

Out of the firelight everything was black and silver, black island, rocks and trees carved cleanly o...

Philosophy and religion - what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?

In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person...

Worse than madness. Sanity.

It’s like those nights when I was a kid, lying awake thinking the darkness would go on forever. And ...

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English ...

The thing is--fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.

The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not...

Jack looked around for understanding, but found only respect.

Ralph chose the firm strip as a path because he needed to think, and only here could he allow his fe...

Lying there in the darkness, he knew he was an outcast. " 'Cos I had some sense.

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!

Life […] is scientific, that’s what it is.

This island has no secrets, not from me. It loves me, and I love it, and when I paint my face I'm a ...

I'm frightend. Of us. I want to go home. O God I to go home." "It's was an accident," said Piggy stu...

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation...

Roger edged past the chief, only just avoiding pushing him with his shoulder. The yelling ceased, an...

I'm warning you. I'm going to get waxy. D'you see? You're not wanted. Understand? We are going to ha...

-No, not it...I mean...what makes things break up like they do?-Piggy rubbed his glasses slowly and ...

What else is there to do?

... People were never quite what you thought they were.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have be...

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men they are far superior and always have bee...

-I got the conch!" --Piggy (in Lord of the Flies), attempting Democracy

You don't even care enough about us to hate us, do you?

I find it very difficult to talk here now because I'm watching the sea all the time. The sea always ...

With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea wh...

The way towards simplicity is through outrage.

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages.

Perhaps there is a beast...maybe it's only us.