The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

Childhood is a disease - a sickness that you grow out of.

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

The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off.

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.

He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.

A novel ensures that we can look before and after, take action at whatever pace we choose, read again and again, skip and go back. The story in a book is humble and serviceable, available, friendly, is not switched on and off but taken up and put down, lasts a lifetime.

Before the Second World War, I believed in the perfectability of social man; that a correct structure of society produced goodwill; and that, therefore, you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. It is possible that I believe something of the same again; but after the war, I did not because I was unable to.

Boys do not evaluate a book. They divide books into categories. There are sexy books, war books, westerns, travel books, science fiction. A boy will accept anything from a section he knows rather than risk another sort. He has to have the label on the bottle to know it is the mixture as before.

I am optimistic when I consider the spiritual dimension which the scientist's discipline forces him to ignore.

I have always understood the Nazis because I am of that sort by nature.

I have been in many countries, and I have found there people examining their own love of life, sense of peril, their own common sense. The one thing they cannot understand is why that same love of life, sense of peril and above all common sense, is not invariably shared among their leaders and rulers.

I must have been an unsatisfactory child for grownups to deal with. I remember how incomprehensible they appeared to me at first, but not, of course, how I appeared to them.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men; they are far superior and always have been.

I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, really. I'd much rather not be me for thousands of years.

If you... scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more like a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be.

Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

Since most scientists are just a bit religious, and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific, we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole, while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.

Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state.

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.

When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.

While I was still a boy, I came to the conclusion that there were three grades of thinking; and since I was later to claim thinking as my hobby, I came to an even stranger conclusion - namely, that I myself could not think at all.

Maybe there is a beast. Maybe its only us.

I am here and here is nowhere in particular.

He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

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

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

I took Laura on a trip once where we followed the Immigrant Trail for about six hundred miles. She really learned a lesson. People forget too often how it was back then.

My biggest loss was the Olympics. I just can't forget losing. I never will.

Yes, but don't forget I also have the luxury of the worlds finest band when it gets lonely.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

Countries under foreign command quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language.

Forget the lottery. Bet on yourself instead.

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.

It makes me forget that I'm not going to be a major star and lead female in films whether it was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five or in the future.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

Sometimes songwriters and singers forget that. They get a melody in their head and the notes will take precedence, so that they wind up forcing a word onto a melody. It doesn't ring true.

Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.

I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.

I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget my songs.

When it's your chance to step up to the plate, just hit it out of the park, and everybody will forget about everything that came before.