Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Soon
Paperback
Seen
Oliver
Reading
Dickens
Dream
Twist
Never
Charles
Would
Twists
People
Hadn
Boxes
Serialized

More quotes by William Golding

Image
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
Image
He doesn't mind if he dies... indeed, he would like to die but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep but not at the price of falling to it.
William Golding
Image
I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages.
William Golding
Image
While I am on, I can discipline myself to that extent. When I am off, I can't discipline myself at all. On the other hand, when I am off, there are so many things I like doing, it doesn't really matter.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
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.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad.
William Golding
Image
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.
William Golding
Image
The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers....Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
William Golding
Image
At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.
William Golding
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
William Golding
Image
The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.
William Golding