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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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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
Nigeria
Languages
English
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Thinking

More quotes by William Golding

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We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
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My father was very musical, and music plays quite a large part in my life.
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Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were.
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I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.
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Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.
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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
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It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.
William Golding
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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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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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Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
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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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Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.
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Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.
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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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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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Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
William Golding
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There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.
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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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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Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.
William Golding