William Golding Quotes

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers... Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
"What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?"
Simon shook.
"There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast."
Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words.
"Pig's head on a stick."
"Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you?" said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?"

"Excerpt from the endnote on the audiobook read by the author: "There have been so many interpretations of the story that I am not going to choose between them. Make your own choice. They contradict each other, the various choices. the only choice that really matters, the only interpretation of the story, if you want one, is your own. Not your teacher's, not your professor's, not mine, not a critic's, not some authority's. The only thing that matters is first, the experience of being in the story, moving through it. Then, any interpretation you like, if it is yours, that's the right one. Because what's in a book is not what an author thought he put into it, it's what the reader gets out of it.

"The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge. Sam twisted and the obscene word shot out of him. " — dance?"
Memory of the dance that none of them had attended shook all four boys convulsively."

O que vocês preferem — ter regras e estar de acordo, ou caçar e matar?

Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.

People don't help much.'
He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.

As for the fear, you'll have to put up with that like the rest of us.

Mata a fera! Corta-lhe as goelas! Espalha o sangue!

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

حال دیگر نور آفتاب رفته بود و تاریکی بیرون می‌آمد. راه‌های میان درختان دیگر دیده نمی‌شد و همه‌جا همچون کف دریا تیره‌وتار و شگفت می‌نمود. گل‌های بازشده سفیدرنگ زیر نور ستاره‌ها می‌درخشیدند.

I don’t like the word "allegorical", I don’t like the word "symbolic", the word I really like is "mythic" and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story.

Language fits over experience like a straight jacket.

The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly toward a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of the pink rock.