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To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be

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
Guess
World
Neither
Hell
Possible
Anything
Damning
May
Damnation
Believe
Merely
Men

More quotes by William Golding

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I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.
William Golding
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the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
William Golding
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If I blow the conch and they don't come back then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued. If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.
William Golding
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I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English.
William Golding
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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
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My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
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
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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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I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.
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
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What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
William Golding
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While I am on, I can discipline myself to that extent. When I am off, I can't discipline myself at all. On the other hand, when I am off, there are so many things I like doing, it doesn't really matter.
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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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
William Golding
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One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
William Golding
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They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten.
William Golding
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Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
William Golding
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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
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His mind was crowded with memories memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.
William Golding
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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
William Golding