Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My father was very musical, and music plays quite a large part in my life.
Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state.
The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won't tell.
When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.
Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.
Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.
They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.
How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?
Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?
We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.
I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.
If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?
As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.
Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, really. I'd much rather not be me for thousands of years.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do.
The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.
There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.
I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.
How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?
I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men; they are far superior and always have been.
I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.
Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.
I am optimistic when I consider the spiritual dimension which the scientist's discipline forces him to ignore.
One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages.
The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers....Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
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.
He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.
The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.
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.
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.
I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.
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.
I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.
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.
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.
One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.
Then you have people coming up like Malcolm Bradbury, a relatively young writer who deals with the academic scene and deals with it, I think, brilliantly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I suppose I'd have to say that my favourite author is Homer. After Homer's Ilaid, I'd name The Odyssey, and then I'd mention a number of plays of Euripides.
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.
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.'