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Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.

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
Successful
Novel

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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
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Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.
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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.
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A star appeared...and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.
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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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I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.
William Golding
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But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.
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Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.
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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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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Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
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The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers....Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
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The rules! shouted Ralph, you're breaking the rules! Who cares?
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How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
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He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.
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Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.
William Golding
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The Navy's a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, 'Frightfully sorry, old chap.'
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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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The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble.
William Golding
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Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.
William Golding