Quotes from William Golding

My father was very musical, and music plays quite a large part in my life.

I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, really. I'd much rather not be me for thousands of years.

Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

Before the Second World War, I believed in the perfectability of social man; that a correct structure of society produced goodwill; and that, therefore, you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. It is possible that I believe something of the same again; but after the war, I did not because I was unable to.

I must have been an unsatisfactory child for grownups to deal with. I remember how incomprehensible they appeared to me at first, but not, of course, how I appeared to them.

If you... scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more like a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be.

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

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.

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

Childhood is a disease - a sickness that you grow out of.

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.

When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.

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.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

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

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

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.

What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.

I have always understood the Nazis because I am of that sort by nature.

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

The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off.

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.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior and always have been. Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she will give you a baby. If you give her a house, she will give you a home. If you give her groceries, she will give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she will give you her heart. She multiples and enlarges whatever is given to her. So if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit!