quotes by Bryce Courtenay

"Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark."
— Bryce Courtenay

"First with the head, then with the heart."
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance.
-Doc"
— Bryce Courtenay

"It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day."
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a cicumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swivelled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.- Peekay"
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"'Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.' He looked at me and continued. 'The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous.' His piercing blue eyes looked into mine.' Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.'"
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"sometimes in life doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency"
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"Never take advice from a donkey. "
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"sweet potatoes in their jackets have a large comfort value built into them"
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"Let me conclude by saying in my experience the glittering prizes in life come more to those who persevere despite setback and disappointment than they do to the exceptionally gifted who, with the confidence of the talents bestowed upon them, often pursue the tasks leading to success with less determination."
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"Absoloodle not"
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"No doubtful aboutski, Morrie Levy is the absoloodle best!
-Doc"
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"I had never seen a prison, nor had I even imagined one, but there is a racial memory in man that instinctively knows of these things. The architecture of misery has an unmistakable look and feel about it."
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)

"The rapacious white tribe who were arriving in increasing numbers, not only as convicts but also as settlers, wanted to own everything they touched. They slashed and burned the wilderness so that they might graze their sheep and grow their corn. They erected fences around the land they now called their own and which henceforth they were prepared to defend with muskets and sometimes even their lives. They built church steeples and prison walls and homes of granite hewn from the virgin rock and timber cut from the umbrageous mountain forests. They possessed everything upon the island, the wild beasts that grazed upon its surface, the birds that flew over it, the fish that swam in its rushing river torrents and the barking seals resting in the quiet bays and secluded inlets. Everything they thought worthwhile was attached to the notion of ownership."
— Bryce Courtenay (The Potato Factory)

"But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope."
— Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)