Lord of the Flies Key Quotes

• For a moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with Piggy on the outside...
• Something dark was fumbling along… the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing.
• • They knew very well why he hadn't [killed the piglet]: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood. 
• About Piggy: “with the martyred expression of a parent”
• • Jack says: I agree with Ralph. 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. So we've got to do the right things. 
• • Jack says: We’ll have rules… then when anyone breaks ‘em- / Bollocks to the rules 
• About Jack: became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees
• About Jack: He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.
• Jack says: If you're hunting sometimes... you can feel as if you're not hunting, but -- being hunted, as if something's behind you all the time in the jungle.
• On Jack and Ralph: They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate. 
• about Roger: Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins. 
• • On Jack's 'mask': ...the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness. 
• • Ralph's thoughts: If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything? 
• • Ralph says: Things are breaking up. I don't understand why. We began well; we were happy. And then -- ...Then people started getting frightened. 
• • Piggy says: I know there isn't no beast -- not with claws and all that, I mean -- but I know there isn't no fear either...Unless--...Unless we get frightened of people. 
• • Simon on The Beast: "What I mean is... Maybe it's only us…. What’s the dirtiest thing there is?"... Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind's essential illness.
• The world, that understandable and lawful word, was slipping away. Once there was this and that; and now -- and the ship had gone.
• • Ralph says: If only they could send us something grown-up… a sign or something 
• The bright morning was full of threats and the circle began to change. It faced out, rather than in and the spears of sharpened wood were like a fence. Jack called them back to the centre.
• However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick. 
• • Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering. 
• • About Jack: A stain in the darkness, a stain that was Jack, detached itself and began to draw away. 
• Jack on The Beast: The beast is a hunter... we couldn't kill it. 
• Jack on leaving the group: I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you.
• • On the sow: the hunters followed wedded to her in lust… they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. 
• • The parachutist: poor broken thing that sat stinking by his side. The beast was harmless and horrible. 
• • The Lord of the Flies: The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life. They assured Simon that everything was a bad business. 
• • There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast... Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!... You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? 
• • During Simon's death: Piggy and Ralph, under the threat of the sky… were glad to touch the brown backs of the fence that hemmed in the terror and made it governable. 
• A thing was crawling out of the forest. It came darkly, uncertainly… The beast stumbled into the horseshoe… It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on a hill… There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws. 
• • Piggy: It was dark. There was that – that bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We was scared! 
• Piggy on his glasses: not because you’re strong, but because what’s right’s right.
• • The liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought…
• You’re acting like a crowd of kids!
• • Ralph: which is better – to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? 
• • Ralph's thoughts: after all we aren't savages really and being rescued isn't a game. 
• • Ralph: He... gazed at the green and black mask before him, trying to remember what Jack looked like. 
• • Then the fatal unreasoning knowledge came to him… the painted savages would go further and further. 
• • Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy.