Quotes from 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.

Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.

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

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.

Life itself is a rickety building

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

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.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

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.

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

We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

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?

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

Sucks to your ass-mar!

If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?

The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.

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.

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.

They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate.

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

Maybe," he said hesitantly, "maybe there is a beast." [...] "What I mean is, maybe it's only us.

His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of mans heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.