Quote

Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

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
Character
Medium
Live
Mediums
Book
Stands
Long
Concept
Men
Concepts
Hardening
Service
Statistical
Novel
Intimately
Simply
Renders

More quotes by 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
This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
William Golding
Image
What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
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
I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.
William Golding
Image
They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
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
It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there.
William Golding
Image
Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
William Golding
Image
I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.
William Golding
Image
I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
William Golding
Image
I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work. I think this is very true of English writers, but perhaps not so true of French writers, who seem to read each other passionately, extensively, and endlessly, and who then talk about it to each other - which is splendid.
William Golding
Image
The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.
William Golding
Image
Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.
William Golding
Image
How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
William Golding
Image
Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?
William Golding
Image
He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.
William Golding
Image
I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.
William Golding
Image
Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.
William Golding
Image
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.
William Golding