Quote

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

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
Ever
Seven
Book
Thousand
Many
Since
Writing
Words
Going
Write
Two
Longhand
Stills
Began
Still
Pages

More quotes by 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.
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I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.
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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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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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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.
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I am here and here is nowhere in particular.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
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A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.
William Golding
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Couldn't a fire outrun a galloping horse?
William Golding
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As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback.
William Golding
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People don't help much.
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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The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.
William Golding
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This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
William Golding
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I hope my books make statements about our general condition.
William Golding
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At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
William Golding
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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
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The greatest ideas are the simplest.
William Golding
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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
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We're not savages. We're English.
William Golding