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

— William Golding

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

— William Golding

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

— William Golding

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 means is 'full of truth which cannot be told in any other way but a story'.

— William Golding

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

— William Golding

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 sea but just watching wave after wave come in. If it's an image of anything, I think it's an image of our own unconscious, the unconscious of our own minds... or you can put it the other way around, and that is that we have a sea in us. After all, we are sea creatures that learned to walk on the land, are we not? And perhaps one way or another we go back to it. Every night when we dream we go back into that kind of depths, and that kind of beauty and monstrosity and mystery. So really the sea is not a single image, it can really image almost anything that the human mind can discover.

— William Golding

-I got the conch!" --Piggy (in Lord of the Flies), attempting Democracy

— William Golding

I got this to say. You're acting like a crowd of kids.

— William Golding

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 conceived the build of the boat in their mind and after that touched every single piece that went into the boat.

— William Golding

I'm frightened. Of us. I want to go home. O God, I to go home." "It was an accident," said Piggy stubbornly,"and that's that." He touched Ralph's bare shoulder and Ralph shuddered at the human contact.

— William Golding