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.

Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless—" Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?" "Unless we get frightened of people.

The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.

As far as the novel is concerned in my own country, I think it's in a pretty healthy state.

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.

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.