Quotes by William Golding

In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person wholly out of one class into another. Perfect translation from one language into another is impossible. Class is the British language.

With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.

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

Ralph chose the firm strip as a path because he needed to think, and only here could he allow his feet to move without having to watch them. Suddenly, pacing by the water, he was overcome with astonishment. 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.

It seems to me that we do live in two worlds... there is this physical one, which is coherant, and there is the spiritual one, which to the average man with his flashes of religious experience, is very often incoherant. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or not all the time, is a vital one, and is what living is like.

Ive always been puzzled, and am still at this moment in a state of confusion, between the imaginative world and the real world. It is perfectly true to say that I have at some times in my life found that the imaginative world had pushed the real world right out of the way, and was literally more real.

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

Jack looked around for understanding, but found only respect.

What else is there to do?

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

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

Im against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing what he does. Id almost prefer the word craftsman. Hes like one of those old-fashioned ship builders who conceived the build of the boat in their mind and after that touched every single piece that went into the boat.

-No, not it...I mean...what makes things break up like they do?-Piggy rubbed his glasses slowly and thought. When he understood how Ralph had gone towards accepting him he flushed pinkly with pride.-I donnot, Ralph. I expect its him.--Jack?--Jack- A taboo was evolving round that word too.

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, thats the job of the writer.

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

You dont even care enough about us to hate us, do you?

Sleep is where we touch what is better left unexamined. There, the whole of life is bundled up, dwindled. There the carefully hoarded and enjoyed personality, our only treasure and at the same time our only defense must die into the ultimate truth of things, the black lightning that splits and destroys all, the positive, unquestionable nothingness.

Allow me to tell you, Mr Taylor, said I, but quietly as the occasion demanded, that one gentleman does not rejoice at the misfortune of another in public.

The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.

Perhaps there is a beast...maybe its only us.