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I don't think it's people's utterances that limit the writing. It's the activity itself. It's actually pretty hard to convey to someone who's not a surfer. The sensation is the thing. And it's tough to describe without resorting to clichés or mystical nonsense.

Tim Winton

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Tim Winton
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 4
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Perth
Australia
Timothy John Winton
Hard
Nonsense
Utterance
Writing
Limits
Clich
Thing
Tough
Convey
Think
Activity
Sensation
Thinking
Pretty
Mystical
People
Actually
Sensations
Resorting
Someone
Limit
Utterances
Without
Describe
Surfer

More quotes by Tim Winton

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The end of the world begins in the sea we love.
Tim Winton
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If we love the sea as much as we claim to we'll do everything we possibly can to keep it healthy. Otherwise we might as well take up golf.
Tim Winton
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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.
Tim Winton
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I don't consciously watch and file lived moments for my work. I have a couple of writer friends who do that and it creeps me out, to be honest. I know people think I must do that too, but I don't. But I do have a long memory.
Tim Winton
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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
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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
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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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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
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The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.
Tim Winton
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Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.
Tim Winton
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Doing nothing is making certain you lose. Which is just gutless.
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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What I'm saying so badly is we're bred now to believe we're in control and should be in control.
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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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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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
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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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Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.
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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Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy.
Tim Winton