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

William Golding

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William Golding
Age: 81 †
Born: 1911
Born: September 19
Died: 1993
Died: June 19
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Newquay
Cornwall
William Gerald Albert Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding
Pessimist
Optimist
Conviction
Intellectual
Nature

More quotes by William Golding

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I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages.
William Golding
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For a small island, the place is remarkably diverse. Writers tend to see things from their own points of view, looking in one direction very much.
William Golding
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He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.
William Golding
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The Navy's a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, 'Frightfully sorry, old chap.'
William Golding
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A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.
William Golding
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If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?
William Golding
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A star appeared...and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.
William Golding
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I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.
William Golding
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My father was very musical, and music plays quite a large part in my life.
William Golding
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No human endeavour can ever be wholly good... it must always have a cost.
William Golding
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I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.
William Golding
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Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.
William Golding
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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.
William Golding
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The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to novelists by the dozen.
William Golding
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I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.
William Golding
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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
William Golding
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Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
William Golding
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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.
William Golding
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And I've been wearing specs since I was three.
William Golding
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One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.
William Golding