Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.
Wilbur Smith
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Wilbur Smith
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 9
Mathematician
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Broken Hill
Wilbur Addison Smith
Read
Book
Biographies
Background
African
Backgrounds
Books
More quotes by Wilbur Smith
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
History is a river that never ends. Today is history, and I am here at the fountainhead.
Wilbur Smith
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
I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind.
Wilbur Smith
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
The best cure for racism is to have somebody shoot at you. Man, it does not matter then what color the arse is that comes to save yours-black or white, you're ready to give it a big fat kiss.
Wilbur Smith
Failure makes success so much sweeter, and allows you to thumb your nose at the crowds.
Wilbur Smith
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
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
I know it's politically incorrect but I enjoy things like the kick boxing and cock fighting.
Wilbur Smith
Politicians all over the world cater to domestic vote banks. They will spend only on what their constituents want. So unless there is a grass root green movement in a nation the politicians will not be willing to spend money on curbing emissions. More awareness is needed amongst the people to effect the real change in how governments spend.
Wilbur Smith
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
I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.
Wilbur Smith
I'm not a prophet I can only use historical reality to come to a view of the future, and my view is that Africa will return to being African and not European. The advent of colonialism was foreign to the country itself, but it will return to what it was before the Europeans arrived.
Wilbur Smith
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
You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.
Wilbur Smith
I shot my first lion at the age of 14 when a pride threatened my father's livestock while he was away on holiday.
Wilbur Smith
beware of your most implacable enemy-yourself.
Wilbur Smith
All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk.
Wilbur Smith
Litigation only makes lawyers fat.
Wilbur Smith