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

“Out of the firelight everything was black and silver, black island, rocks and trees carved cleanly out of the sky and silver river with a flashing light rippling back and forth along the lip of the...”

“I'm frightend. Of us. I want to go home. O God I to go home." "It's was an accident," said Piggy stubbornly,"and that's that." He touched Ralph's bare shoulder and Ralph shuddered at the human cont...”

“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.”

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”

“The thing is--fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.”

“And the heart sounds like a sour conch,calls, oh sea, oh lament, oh molten panic,scattered in the unlucky and disheveled waves:the sea reports sonorouslyon its languid shadows, its green poppies.”

“In an era of globalization, people recognize that they are part of a global society, but they have no idea how to make such a society work. So far, no unified vision or leadership has emerged to gu...”

“Everybody should be equal in a democracy - that is the nature of a democracy.”

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words ...”