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What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

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
Humans
Savages
Animals
Animal

More quotes by William Golding

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I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.
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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.
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Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.
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As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
William Golding
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He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.
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How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
William Golding
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The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.
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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I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either. Piggy paused. Unless— Ralph moved restlessly. Unless what? Unless we get frightened of people.
William Golding
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Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
William Golding
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We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
William Golding
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Which is better -- to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better -- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
William Golding
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You'll get back to where you came from.
William Golding
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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.
William Golding
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What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
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We're not savages. We're English.
William Golding
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Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!
William Golding
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The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won't tell.
William Golding
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I suppose I'd have to say that my favourite author is Homer. After Homer's Ilaid, I'd name The Odyssey, and then I'd mention a number of plays of Euripides.
William Golding
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Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.
William Golding