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For a small island, the place is remarkably diverse. Writers tend to see things from their own points of view, looking in one direction very much.

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
Writers
View
Remarkably
Views
Island
Small
Diverse
Looking
Islands
Place
Points
Much
Direction
Things
Tend

More quotes by 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.
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What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.
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I'm scared of him, said Piggy, and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's all right really, an' then when you see him again it's like asthma an' you can't breathe.
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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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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I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.
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The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to novelists by the dozen.
William Golding
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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
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As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
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Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
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Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.
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Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.
William Golding
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In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.
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.
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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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Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don't think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.
William Golding
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Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.
William Golding
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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
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What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
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The beast was harmless and horrible and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.
William Golding