Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wilbur Smith
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 9
Mathematician
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Broken Hill
Wilbur Addison Smith
Age
Livestock
Father
Lion
Away
Lions
Firsts
Threatened
First
Holiday
Shot
Shots
Pride

More quotes by Wilbur Smith

Image
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
Image
I know it's politically incorrect but I enjoy things like the kick boxing and cock fighting.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
Failure makes success so much sweeter, and allows you to thumb your nose at the crowds.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Cape Town's beaches are superb and while the water on the Atlantic side is damn cold, it's very pleasant on the other side. Bring your golf clubs if you play - Cape Town has some fabulous golf courses.
Wilbur Smith
Image
The really disturbing thing about Somalia is that in a country where there are few economic opportunities, pirates are perceived as glamorous and are held in awe by young boys who aspire to their lifestyle.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
Herbert, my father, was born in Britain but went out to Africa in his teens to join his father and built up an 18,000-acre ranch in what was then Northern Rhodesia, providing work for the locals. He was my hero when I was a boy.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
I put my soul into every book I write.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
There's nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Litigation only makes lawyers fat.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I love the sea as much as I love the veldt of Africa.
Wilbur Smith