What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That's what you could say about it.

I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

Latin, as we all know, ultimately broke down into Spanish, Italian, French, and so on. One wonders whether there will be an imperial parallel with English breaking down into, shall we say, North American, European, Australian, and so on. On the other hand, there is this immense, inward-driving influence of radio and television that is bringing us all back together. One could say it's a fight between the two: a fight between regionalism and the standardization through communication.

If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued." "If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.