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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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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
Thing
Surface
English
India
Nigeria
Almost
Languages
Language
Floating
True
Odd
Place
Artificial
Even
Fifty

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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.
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What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
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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.
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The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.
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Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
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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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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
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Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.
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Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.
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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.
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They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
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