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Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy.

Tim Winton

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Tim Winton
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 4
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Perth
Australia
Timothy John Winton
Immediacy
Tense
Distance
Offers
Authority
Emotional
Present
Past

More quotes by 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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The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.
Tim Winton
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Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.
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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It's impossible to imagine what Australia would be like without surfing.
Tim Winton
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Whatever you believe, you need faith to get through the day.
Tim Winton
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Doing nothing is making certain you lose. Which is just gutless.
Tim Winton
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Yet however comforting and peaceful beach-combing is, it ends up like the sea, as disturbing as it is reassuring. In dark moments I believe that walking on a beach at low tide is to be looking for death, or at least anticipating it. You will only find the dead, the spilled and the cast-off. Things torn free of their life or their place.
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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It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.
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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For every moment the sea is peace and relief, there is another when it shivers and stirs to become chaos. It's just as ready to claim as it is to offer.
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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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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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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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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Every great moment of social change was once a confirmed impossibility. People's determination in the face of overwhelming odds has, time and again, triumphed over what seems impossible. This is what you tell yourself.
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 eat green ants often enough. They are wonderful. The trick is to squash them before you eat them, otherwise they bite your tongue and it ruins the experience.
Tim Winton
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We live in specific places. We are marked by a place.
Tim Winton