William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding CBEwas a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his novel Lord of the Flies, he won a Nobel Prize in Literature, and was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 September 1911
fear fall sleep
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.
lying heaven infancy
Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
jobs writing bird
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.
forgiveness given
But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.
art thinking useless
I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.
men artist two
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.
book character men
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.
men skulls naked
I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there...
sorry fire water
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.'
learning science discovery
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.
odyssey favourite
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.
book greek age
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.
player decision playing-chess
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.
animal savages humans
What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?