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I am a closet birdwatcher. I can identify Southern African species, but it irks me I can barely tell a jay from a blackbird in the U.K.

Wilbur Smith

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Wilbur Smith
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 9
Mathematician
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Broken Hill
Wilbur Addison Smith
African
Species
Blackbird
Tell
Blackbirds
Closet
Closets
Barely
Identify
Southern

More quotes by Wilbur Smith

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It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one.
Wilbur Smith
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I go on a hunting safari at least once a year to Botswana, which is fantastic because we have a huge area of wilderness entirely to ourselves. My island covers roughly 55 acres, which again I have to myself, with nearly half a kilometre of private beach with my own jetties and boats.
Wilbur Smith
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Quite frankly, I think political correctness is the worst form of censorship. You're not allowed to speak your mind unless you're black, or unless you're a terrorist, or unless you're an Arab or a minority people. Then you can say what you like. But if you are like a lot of us you are not supposed to say certain things.
Wilbur Smith
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Let it simply be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world.
Wilbur Smith
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Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.
Wilbur Smith
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History is a river that never ends. Today is history, and I am here at the fountainhead.
Wilbur Smith
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beware of your most implacable enemy-yourself.
Wilbur Smith
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Litigation only makes lawyers fat.
Wilbur Smith
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I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes.
Wilbur Smith
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I read all of Rider Haggard's books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I'm delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that's exactly what I am.
Wilbur Smith
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I don't want children. Why should I let some strange little monster into my life to destroy what to me is a perfect set-up?
Wilbur Smith
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I grew up in Rhodesia on my father's ranch and every year he used to take us on safari in some remote area of the wilderness.
Wilbur Smith
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What I like about writing is the sense of godlike power it gives you.
Wilbur Smith
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My family wasn't terribly affluent and looked upon money very carefully as something that had to be saved, not spent. My father built the ducting that took air into the copper mines and made about 6 d a yard in the Thirties, which was good money back then.
Wilbur Smith
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Every time one of my books sells a million copies in paperback, Pan Macmillan gives me a gold statuette of Pan. I have about 20 of them.
Wilbur Smith
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It's a strange paradox that a man gifted with too many talents can fritter them all away without developing a single one to its full.
Wilbur Smith
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You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.
Wilbur Smith
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People don't really know themselves until they're 30. Like most people nowadays, I went to university, got a degree and wandered for a bit. I trained to be a chartered accountant, which I didn't much enjoy, and it was only slowly that the idea of becoming a creative writer gelled.
Wilbur Smith
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I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind.
Wilbur Smith
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I know it's politically incorrect but I enjoy things like the kick boxing and cock fighting.
Wilbur Smith