Lord Of The Flies Quotes

“They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“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.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“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 have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.”
― William Golding

“I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's all right really, an' then when you see him again, it's like asthma an' you can't breathe.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“We musn't let anything happen to Piggy, must we?”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“He noticed, without understanding, how the flames were visible now against the dull light. Evening was come, not with calm beauty but with the threat of violence”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Maybe,' he said hesitantly, 'maybe there is a beast.'
The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement.
'You, Simon? You believe in this?'
'I don't know,' said Simon. 'But . . .'
His heartbeats were choking him.
The storm broke.
'Sit down!'
'Shut up!'
'Take the conch!'
'Sod you!'
'Shut up!'
Ralph shouted.
'Hear him! He's got the conch!'
'What I mean is. Maybe . . . it's only us.'
'Nuts!'
That was Piggy, shocked out of decorum.
'We could be sort of . . .'
Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.”
― William Golding

“Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Grownups know things, said Piggy. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be alright---
They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose---
They'd build a ship---
The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life.
They wouldn't quarrel---
Or break my specs---
Or talk about a beast---
If only they could get a message to us, cried Ralph desperately. If only they could send us something grownup. . . a sign or something.”
― William Golding

“The whole book is posing a question. You think you've won a war - what you've done is finish a war. There was a crime committed in that war the like of which perhaps was never committed in human history. You think about it.”
― William Golding

“An anniversary is where you look back at having either fulfilled Cinderella or Lord of the Flies.”
― Fernando A. Torres

“And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of mans heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Eyes shining, mouths open, triumphant, they savored the right of domination. They were lifted up: were friends.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“The boys were dancing. The pile was so rotten, and now so tinder-dry, that whole limbs yielded passionately to the yellow flames that poured upwards and shook a great beards of flame twenty feet in the air. For yards round the fire the heat was like a blow, and the breeze was a river of sparks. Trunks crumbled to a white dust.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“The greatest ideas are the simplest. Now there was something to be done they worked with passion”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“I thought Lord of the Flies was one of the great rip-offs of our time. Complete steal from A High Wind In Jamaica. He just literally lifted the entire theme, plot, and virtually characterization from A High Wind In Jamaica, turned them into a bunch of small boys and placed it on an island. Otherwise it's precisely the same novel.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“Our fear of the dark reveals our true nature. In the darkness, the light can be seen for what it is... The salvation of civilization. Yet, place anyone under a big enough magnifying glass, he'll get burned. ~Oliver Oyanadel”
― Oliver Oyanadel, Little Arson Annie: Short Stories

“Mrs. Lasserstein passes out copies of Lord of the Flies and says this will be our fall book, but a whole season seems too long because Lord of the Flies is only 208 pages, and I have already read it, and it is not very interesting. It is by William Golding who won an award for showing that boys are mean and badly behaved, even somewhere nice like the beach. This seems like something anyone in the entire world who has ever met a boy could tell you, but they gave William Golding a Nobel Prize for it.”
― Laurie Frankel, One Two Three

“Marking Raxter as hers, and sometimes I think that if she asked, I’d let her to the same to me.”
― Rory Power, Wilder Girls

“America indeed has become a progressive nation, if we understand "progressive" to mean progressing away from God, his incomparable blessings, and the moral foundation that made America great, and advancing toward a mythical utopia where mankind is in control of mankind (think "Lord of the Flies").”
― Ron Brackin

“There's a lot of dark around here with no power" And of course he meant it two ways”
― Mike Bockoven, FantasticLand

“If she was so afraid and so traumatized by my act of mercy; why didn't she stop me?”
― Mike Bockoven, FantasticLand

“It wasn't Fantasticland anymore. Sadie blew her away and those kids dug the grave where she landed”
― Mike Bockoven, FantasticLand