Quote

The man assumes the role of the loner, the thinker and the searching spirit who calls the privileged and the powerful to task. The power of one was the courage to remain separate, th think through the truth and not be beguiled by convention or the plausible arguments of those who expect to maintain power, whatever the cost.

Bryce Courtenay

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Bryce Courtenay
Age: 79 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 1
Died: 2012
Died: November 22
Novelist
Johannesburg
Gauteng
South Africa
Arthur Bryce Courtenay
Thinking
Roles
Assuming
Searching
Powerful
Tasks
Conventions
Whatever
Remain
Privileged
Beguiled
Spirit
Argument
Thinker
Loner
Truth
Expect
Maintain
Assumes
Power
Role
Calls
Plausible
Men
Cost
Separate
Convention
Think
Courage
Task
Arguments

More quotes by Bryce Courtenay

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Your brain, Peekay, has two functions it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been
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It's been a privilege to write for you and to have you accept me as a storyteller in your lives, Now, as my story draws to an end, may I say only, `Thank you. You have been simply wonderful'.
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It's not what a man does, it's what a man is that counts!
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Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise.
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I am essentially an entertainer and a storyteller.
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People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.
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. . . besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child.
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If I were king of the world there wouldn't be boat people, there would only be people coming in boats. I would mix us all up so that we were all exactly one shade of each other.
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Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.
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Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.
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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
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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
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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.
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I watch people get older and lose their intellectual acuity you lose that sharpness, that cleanness, that brain that you worked so hard on and that you were gifted with and lose the gifts that were given.
Bryce Courtenay
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But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope.
Bryce Courtenay
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I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end.
Bryce Courtenay
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I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.
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Good conversational debate is an end in itself, and talking for the love of conversation is what makes us human.
Bryce Courtenay
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sometimes in life doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency
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It's good to be a little frightened. It's good to respect your opponent. It keeps you sharp. In the fight game, the head rules the heart. But in the end the heart is the boss.
Bryce Courtenay