Tim Winton > Quotes

“It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.

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― Tim Winton

“Writing a book is a bit like surfing," he said. "Most of the time you're waiting. And it's quite pleasant, sitting in the water waiting. But you are expecting that the result of a storm over the horizon, in another time zone, usually, days old, will radiate out in the form of waves. And eventually, when they show up, you turn around and ride that energy to the shore. It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace. As a writer, you roll up to the desk every day, and then you sit there, waiting, in the hope that something will come over the horizon. And then you turn around and ride it, in the form of a story.”
― Tim Winton

“I liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try. ”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“ And as an artist, as someone who writes stories and tries to make words into beautiful forms, it's vitally important to me, especially in a culture that's forgotten the value of beauty. It's a primary source or inspiration, I guess, when so much of what goes on around you is only about money and big swinging dick capitalism. It's important for blokes to be able to do beautiful stuff, impractical stuff, that adds to life. That's an early life-lesson from surfing.


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― Tim Winton

“It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“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.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“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.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Summer came whirling out of the night and stuck fast. One morning late in November everybody got up at Cloudstreet and saw the white heat washing in through the windows. The wild oats and buffalo grass were brown and crisp. The sky was the color of kerosene. The air was thin and volatile. Smoke rolled along the tracks as men began to burn off on the embankment. Birds cut singing down to a few necessary phrases, and beneath them in the streets, the tar began to bubble. The city was full of Yank soldiers; the trams were crammed to standing with them. The river sucked up the sky and went flat and glittery right down the middle of the place and people went to it in boats and britches and barebacked. Where the river met the sea, the beaches ran north and south, white and broad as highways in a dream, and men and babies stood in the surf while gulls hung in the haze above, casting shadows on the immodest backs of the oilslicked women.”
― Tim Winton

“Inside those waves our voices bounced back at us, deeper and larger for all the noise, like the voices of men. ”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“That eye... was like a fuckin hole in the universe”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Everyone will tell you your goal is impossible, pointless, stupid, wasteful. So you hang tough. You back yourslef and only yourself. ”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“The pig winks and rolls in the bog. He kicks his legs up and his trotters clack together. The sun is low over the neighbourhood. There is the smell of oncoming night, of pollen settling, the sounds of kids fighting bath time. Lester comes down, waving his hands.
Don't drown the pig, Fish. We're saving him for Christmas! We're gonna eat him.
No!
I'll drink to that, says the pig.
Lester stands there. He looks at Fish. He looks at the porker. He peeps over the fence. The pig. The flamin' pig. The pig has just spoken. It's no language that he can understand, but there's no doubt. He feels a little crook, like maybe he should go over to that tree and puke.
I like him, Lestah.
He talks?
Yep.
Oh, my gawd.
Lester looks at his retarded son again and once more at the pig.
The pig talks.
I likes him.
Yeah, I bet.
The pig snuffles, lets off a few syllables: aka sembon itwa. It's tongues, that's what it is. A blasted Pentecostal pig.
And you understand him?
Yep. I likes him.
Always the miracles you don't need. It's not a simple world, Fish. It's not.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“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 ad space without you.”
― Tim Winton

“I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living
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― Tim Winton, Breath

“Shit, he said as a great, green glut of water poured up at our feet. I wonder what the ordinary people are doin today.”
― Tim Winton

“Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet