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My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.
Wilbur Smith
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Wilbur Smith
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 9
Mathematician
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Broken Hill
Wilbur Addison Smith
Novel
Firsts
Wrench
First
Wrenches
Real
Eminent
World
Publishers
Rejected
Starting
More quotes by Wilbur Smith
Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.
Wilbur Smith
You know that feeling when you finish a final exam and you think, 'I never want to do that again'? Well I have the same feeling when I finish a novel. Each time I say, 'I think I may retire now' and then after six months the ideas start to churn again. I could never stop.
Wilbur Smith
They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.
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
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
What I like about writing is the sense of godlike power it gives you.
Wilbur Smith
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
There's nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.
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
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
At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.
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 know it's politically incorrect but I enjoy things like the kick boxing and cock fighting.
Wilbur Smith
You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.
Wilbur Smith
A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.
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 think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness.
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
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
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
