Quotes from William Golding

But nobody else understands about the fire. If someone threw you a rope when you were drowning. If a doctor said take this because if you don't take you'll die - you would, wouldn't you?

He knelt among the shadows and felt his isolation bitterly. They were savages it was true; but they were human and the ambushing fears of the deep night were coming on. Ralph moaned faintly. Tired though he was, he could not relax and fall into a well of sleep for fear of the tribe. Lying there in the darkness, he knew he was an outcast. 'Cos I had some sense.

Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast. The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this? I don't know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. [...] Ralph shouted. Hear him! He's got the conch! What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us. Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum.

No human endeavour can ever be wholly good... it must always have a cost.

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

I must say that anyone who passed through those years [of World War II] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers... Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.

The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge. Sam twisted and the obscene word shot out of him. --dance? Memory of the dance that none of them had attended shook all four boys convulsively.

I was the only boy in our school what had asthma, said the fat boy with a touch of pride. And I've been wearing specs since I was three.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

Once more, amid the breeze, the shouting, the slanting sunlight on the high mountain, was shed that glamour, that strange invisible light of friendship, adventure and content.

He noticed, without understanding, how the flames were visible now against the dull light. Evening was come, not with calm beauty but with the threat of violence

I have walked by stalls in the market-place where books, dog-eared and faded from their purple, have burst with a white hosanna. I have seen people crowned with a double crown, holding in either hand the crook and flail, the power and the glory. I have understood how the scar be­comes a star, I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal. My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer over my shoulder.

As long as there's light we're brave enough

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, that's the job of the writer.

The way towards simplicity is through outrage.

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

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 amount of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.

Who would sharpen a point aginst the darkness of the world?

There ought to be some mode of life where all love is good, where one love can't compete with another but adds to it.

Here at last was the imagined but never fully realized place leaping into real life.

Of course we're frightened sometimes but we put up with being frightened.

The moon was through to the sunset side of the gap, but its light was hardly noticeable on the earth for the ruddy brilliance of the firelight.

It's simpler to believe in a miracle.