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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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Tim Winton
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 4
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Perth
Australia
Timothy John Winton
Firsts
Went
Human
Study
Humans
Existence
First
Child
Children
Four
Years
Hours
Born
Learnt
School
Took

More quotes by 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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People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.
Tim Winton
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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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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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Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy.
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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The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.
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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Whatever you believe, you need faith to get through the day.
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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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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The end of the world begins in the sea we love.
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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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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Doing nothing is making certain you lose. Which is just gutless.
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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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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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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It's impossible to imagine what Australia would be like without surfing.
Tim Winton