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Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

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
Impenetrable
Laughter
Language
Understand
Nothing

More quotes by William Golding

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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
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You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.
William Golding
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Beethoven for listening Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It's as wide as literature in fact, it is probably wider.
William Golding
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Couldn't a fire outrun a galloping horse?
William Golding
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You'll get back to where you came from.
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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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
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We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.
William Golding
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A star appeared...and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.
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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I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.
William Golding
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He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
William Golding
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Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
William Golding
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We're not savages. We're English.
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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We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.
William Golding
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How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
William Golding
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Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.
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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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