Quotes by William Golding

“I'm warning you. I'm going to get waxy. D'you see? You're not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So don't try it on, m...”

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

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

“We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.”

“Life [] is scientific, thats what it is.”

“I've 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 fou...”

“Jack looked around for understanding, but found only respect.”

“As for the fear, you'll have to put up with that like the rest of us.”

“You don't even care enough about us to hate us, do you?”

“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.”

“Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we h...”

“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...”

“Philosophy and religion - what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?”

“This island has no secrets, not from me. It loves me, and I love it, and when I paint my face I'm a part of the island. The swarthiness of my face hidden behind the clay and charcoal. I leave behin...”

“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.”

“I'm against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing what he does. I'd almost prefer the word 'craftsman'. He's like one of those old-fashioned ship bui...”

“At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.”