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One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

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
Trying
Tries
Application
Hopes
Specific
General
Rather
Tell
Truth

More quotes by William Golding

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Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
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What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
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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.
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I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.
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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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Which is better -- to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better -- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
William Golding
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I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either. Piggy paused. Unless— Ralph moved restlessly. Unless what? Unless we get frightened of people.
William Golding
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If I blow the conch and they don't come back then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued. If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.
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There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.
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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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But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.
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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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As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
William Golding
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We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
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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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.
William Golding
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If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?
William Golding
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Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.
William Golding
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They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten.
William Golding
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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
William Golding