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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.

Tim Winton

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Tim Winton
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 4
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Perth
Australia
Timothy John Winton
People
Youth
Unlike
Grew
Australia
Bits
Essentially
Unreflective
Sports
Anti
Macho
Long
Roll
Sadly
Always
Rock
Rebellious
Time
Rocks
Surfing
Like
Intellectual
Cult

More quotes by Tim Winton

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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.
Tim Winton
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Australia was once a leader in taking global warming seriously. The former PM [Kevin Rudd] called it 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. But in the past couple of years the national consensus has been eroded and Australians are being encouraged by the polluters and their mates in Parliament to forget it was ever mentioned. It's heartbreaking.
Tim Winton
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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
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Doing nothing is making certain you lose. Which is just gutless.
Tim Winton
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It's terrifying to think you can remember things you shouldn't possibly be able to. It's like that childhood fear of having your soul slip from your body in your sleep. The darkness, those black sheets of glass sliding over you, upping the pressure, pushing you through the time and space and story.
Tim Winton
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I went to school for 12 years, and uni for four, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study.
Tim Winton
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It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.
Tim Winton
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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.
Tim Winton
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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.
Tim Winton
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I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have
Tim Winton
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Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy.
Tim Winton
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Life is wild by definition. And organic existence is violent. Though I find this hard to accept. And I know it goes against the cultural grain of therapeutic smoothing so dominant in what we like to call 'cultural discourse'.
Tim Winton
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I love the sea but it does not love me. The sea is like a desert in that it is quite rightly feared. The sea and the desert are both hungry, they have things to be getting on with so you do not go into them lightly.
Tim Winton
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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.
Tim Winton
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When you're surfing you're not thinking about where you parked the car or what you're going to do when you grow up or what you're going to buy when you've got lots of money. You know, you're just there. You're in the moment. And I think in a contemporary world, that's a rare privilege.
Tim Winton
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Overfishing is an obvious threat to our capacity to feed ourselves.
Tim Winton
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Nothing is as daunting as the threats associated with global warming. That's the biggie. Everyone bangs on about rising sea levels but the real challenge of a warming planet is ocean acidification. An acid ocean spells the end of life on earth.
Tim Winton
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It's impossible to imagine what Australia would be like without surfing.
Tim Winton
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Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers
Tim Winton
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There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings.
Tim Winton