Tim Winton Quotes - Page 2

The beachcomber goes looking for trouble, everything he finds is a sign of trouble. The writer is the same; without trouble he has nothing to work with, so he picks over the tide line, over the bits and pieces of people's lives with grim fascination.

The blank page doesn't bother me. It's the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It's worse when I'm not making stuff up.

The night is full of stories. They float up like miasmas, as though the dead leave their dreams in the earth where you bury them, only to have them rise to meet you in sleep. Mostly the scenes are familiar, but sometimes everything is strange, the people unknown.

Different tenses and perspectives offer you different things. It helps to distinguish the world that they are in.

I wanted to be a writer all my life. Since I was 10. And then at a certain point I began to assume I was one, which is rich, I know. I didn't meet a writer until I was nearly an adult, so I had no idea what I'd bet the farm on.

Truly brave people accept that they may not see victory in their own lifetime. You just keep at it for the sake of those who come after you. You might not win but you stand a better chance by doing something.

Every great moment of social change was once a confirmed impossibility. People's determination in the face of overwhelming odds has, time and again, triumphed over what seems impossible. This is what you tell yourself.

Hunting and gathering are in my blood. But I've lived long enough to witness a diminution in the seas, and to notice a fragility where once I saw - or assumed - an endless bounty.

And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.

It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.

Humour is God's special gift to humanity. Handy, because it turns out to be necessary.

And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

When I was a girl I had this strong feeling that I didn't belong anywhere,... It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed..., that's where I belonged, that was my country.

Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers

I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.

Surfers are the canaries down the mine. Those of us who surf spend more time than anyone soaking in whatever the sea has become. We're suspended in consequences, you might say.

The notion that love is abroad in the world has shaped my life.

I grew up in a whaling town. We didn't stop whaling in Australia until 1978. And I've always lived in fishing communities. You could say I'm from the Redneck Wing of marine conservation. Everything I know about the sea I learnt at the end of a spear or a hook. Seems weird to admit it, but I hunted and killed my way to enlightenment. Eventually you see where you've been. All the traces you leave are gaps and absences. And it's a sick feeling, knowing you might bequeath a full dose of Nothing to those who come after you.

Yet however comforting and peaceful beach-combing is, it ends up like the sea, as disturbing as it is reassuring. In dark moments I believe that walking on a beach at low tide is to be looking for death, or at least anticipating it. You will only find the dead, the spilled and the cast-off. Things torn free of their life or their place.

We are all part of that global traffic and I think that the effort to make yourself understood and to be not a problem for anyone or to hide your own particuarly is a mistake. I think people will and do value individuality.

I never start with what lots of people think of as a subject or a theme. They're school words, not art words. So, writing essays busts my arse because the art is in addressing the subject. I find it really difficult and monstrously time-consuming. In an essay I need to employ my imagination but it's indentured in a way it's not when I'm free to make everything up.

A problem not so well understood is the growing presence of plastics in the marine food chain. If we don't make big changes fast, the fish we do save may no longer be safe to eat.

Optimism is necessary even if you don't instinctively feel it.

In Australia surfing was for the oiks. It was always rebellious. And sadly it was for a long time a bit unreflective and macho and anti-intellectual. Unlike other sports it was essentially a youth cult, like rock and roll. But like rock and roll its people grew up.

Doing nothing is making certain you lose. Which is just gutless.