Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Frightened
Beast
Moved
Unless
Restlessly
Either
Piggy
Fear
Ralph
Mean
Paused
People
Claws

More quotes by William Golding

Image
I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
William Golding
Image
I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.
William Golding
Image
How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
William Golding
Image
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
William Golding
Image
Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were.
William Golding
Image
If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?
William Golding
Image
And I've been wearing specs since I was three.
William Golding
Image
The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.
William Golding
Image
One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
William Golding
Image
the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
William Golding
Image
The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
William Golding
Image
As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
William Golding
Image
I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.
William Golding
Image
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.
William Golding
Image
Of the authors writing in English, I'd mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I'm afraid however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.
William Golding
Image
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
William Golding