Quote

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

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
Mother
Prize
Introduction
School
English
Copy
Littles
Works
Shelves
Best
Modern
Contains
Maugham
Little
Literature
Collection
Somerset
Age
Ashes
Essay
American
Copies
Shelf
Keep
Collections
Essays

More quotes by Wilbur Smith

Image
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
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
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
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
I love the sea as much as I love the veldt of Africa.
Wilbur Smith
Image
beware of your most implacable enemy-yourself.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
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
I'm not a good father and they're not children any more the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life and they were not my people any more.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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
Image
When I vacate this sack of old bones I won't care what you do with it. Bury or burn it but don't make much fuss.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Despite the fact that I spend a lot of time in London, Switzerland and New York, Africa is the place I know and love best, and my heart will always lie here.
Wilbur Smith
Image
History is a river that never ends. Today is history, and I am here at the fountainhead.
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
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
Image
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
Image
I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind.
Wilbur Smith
Image
There's nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.
Wilbur Smith