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

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.

There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.

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.

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.

How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?

I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.