Quotes by William Golding

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of ones waking life was spent watching ones feet.

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

It wasnt until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that youve got to write your own books and nobody elses, and then everything followed from there.

I dont like the word allegorical, I dont like the word symbolic - the word I really like is mythic, and people always think that means full of lies, whereas of course what it really means is full of truth which cannot be told in any other way but a story.

Its simpler to believe in a miracle.

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

Im frightend. Of us. I want to go home. O God I to go home. Its was an accident, said Piggy stubbornly,and thats that. He touched Ralphs bare shoulder and Ralph shuddered at the human contact.

The thing is--fear cant hurt you any more than a dream.

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

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest.

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

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

Were all mad, the whole damned race. Were wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, were all mad and in solitary confinement.

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

Out of the firelight everything was black and silver, black island, rocks and trees carved cleanly out of the sky and silver river with a flashing light rippling back and forth along the lip of the fall.

I tell you, money cant build your spire for you. Build it of gold and it would simply sink deeper.

Roger edged past the chief, only just avoiding pushing him with his shoulder. The yelling ceased, and Samneric lay looking up in quiet terror. Roger advanced upon them as one wielding a nameless authority.

Girls say to me, very reasonably, why isnt it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys? Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. Thats one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Dont ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because Im going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you cant do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why arent they little boys AND little girls? Well, if theyd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didnt want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.

Im warning you. Im going to get waxy. Dyou see? Youre not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So dont try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else--- Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth. There was blackness within, a blackness that spread.

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