No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

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

I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head. They were done, skilfully, coldly,...

I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.

We think we know.””Know? That’s worse than an atom bomb, and always was.

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest.

He knelt among the shadows and felt his isolation bitterly. They were savages it was true; but they were human.

With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is...

Worse than madness. Sanity.

In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person wholly out of one class into another. Perfect translation from one language into another is...

Girls say to me, very reasonably, ‘why isn’t it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?’ Well, my reply is I was once a little boy – I...

Sleep is where we touch what is better left unexamined. There, the whole of life is bundled up, dwindled. There the carefully hoarded and enjoyed personality, our only treasure and at the same time our...

We have to face it at last. We’re not all human.

The crucifixion should never be depicted. It is a horror to be veiled.

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.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.

I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.

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?

His manual of heaven and hell lay open before me, and I could perceive my nothingness in this scheme.

I think are foolish to pretend they are equal to men,they are far superior and always have been. -William Golding

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

Ralph chose the firm strip as a path because he needed to think, and only here could he allow his feet to move without having to watch them. Suddenly, pacing by the water, he was...

Out of the firelight everything was black and silver, black island, rocks and trees carved cleanly out of the sky and silver river with a flashing light rippling back and forth along the lip of...

We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

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’, whereas of course what it really...

It seems to me that we do live in two worlds… there is this physical one, which is coherant, and there is the spiritual one, which to the average man with his flashes of religious...

Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible...

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.

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.

There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

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.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.

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 find it very difficult to talk here now because I’m watching the sea all the time. The sea always makes me watch it all the time. I’ve spent hours and hours not just on...

The way towards simplicity is through outrage.

It’s simpler to believe in a miracle.

The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

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.

This island has no secrets, not from me. It loves me, and I love it, and when I paint my face I’m a part of the island. The swarthiness of my face hidden behind the...

I came to see you two-” Words could not express the dull pain of these things.

You don’t even care enough about us to hate us, do you?

I’ve always been puzzled, and am still at this moment in a state of confusion, between the imaginative world and the real world. It is perfectly true to say that I have at some times...

I do think that art that doesn’t communicate is useless.

I’m warning you. I’m going to get waxy. D’you see? You’re not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So don’t...

I’m frightend. Of us. I want to go home. O God I to go home.” “It’s was an accident,” said Piggy stubbornly,”and that’s that.” He touched Ralph’s bare shoulder and Ralph shuddered at the human...

I’m against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing what he does. I’d almost prefer the word ‘craftsman’. He’s like one of those old-fashioned ship builders who...