Tim Winton > Quotes

“It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.”
― Tim Winton

“Writing a book is a bit like surfing," he said. "Most of the time you're waiting. And it's quite pleasant, sitting in the water waiting. But you are expecting that the result of a storm over the horizon, in another time zone, usually, days old, will radiate out in the form of waves. And eventually, when they show up, you turn around and ride that energy to the shore. It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace. As a writer, you roll up to the desk every day, and then you sit there, waiting, in the hope that something will come over the horizon. And then you turn around and ride it, in the form of a story.”
― Tim Winton

“It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“...the past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.”
― Tim Winton, The Turning

“Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“When I was a girl I had this strong feeling that I didn't belong anywhere,... It was in my head, what I thought and dreamt, what I believed..., that's where I belonged, that was my country.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“I liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try. ”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Being afreaid proves you're alive and awake.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Everything was normal and right. There were dishes in the sink and the sound of kids playing in the street and the trains passing smutty wind. Something had settled over the kitchen. Rose kept the colours inside the lines and all the patterns were proper, sensible and neat. Happiness. That's what it was.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“He was free and unencumbered. Which is to say alone and unemployed.”
― Tim Winton, Eyrie

“And somehow, somewhere along the track, I went numb. I couldn’t say what it was & didn’t dare try. How do you explain the sense of being made to feel improper ? I withdrew into a watchful rectitude, anxious to please, risking nothing. I followed the outline of my life, carefully rehearsing form without conviction, like a bishop who can’t see that his faith has become an act.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“ And as an artist, as someone who writes stories and tries to make words into beautiful forms, it's vitally important to me, especially in a culture that's forgotten the value of beauty. It's a primary source or inspiration, I guess, when so much of what goes on around you is only about money and big swinging dick capitalism. It's important for blokes to be able to do beautiful stuff, impractical stuff, that adds to life. That's an early life-lesson from surfing.


”
― Tim Winton

“That was the simple objective, being airborne, up longer, up higher, more casually & with more fuck off elegance than anyone else in the world. I never understood the rules or the science of it but I recognized the single-mindedness it took to match risk with nerve come what may. Some endeavours require a kind of egotism, a near autistic narrowness. Everything conspires against you – the habits of physics, the impulse to flee - & you’re weighed down by every dollop of commonsense dished up. Everyone will tell you your goal is impossible, pointless, stupid, wasteful so you hang tough. You back yourself & only yourself. This idiot resolve is all you have.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“So you've given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.

No. No. I'll stay a cop. But it's not us and them anymore. It's us and us and us. It's always us. That's what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there's no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“Keep the day ahead of you, that's what the old man used to say.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“That eye... was like a fuckin hole in the universe”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity.”
― Tim Winton, Dirt Music

“Everyone will tell you your goal is impossible, pointless, stupid, wasteful. So you hang tough. You back yourslef and only yourself. ”
― tim winton, Breath

“Inside those waves our voices bounced back at us, deeper and larger for all the noise, like the voices of men. ”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“The pig winks and rolls in the bog. He kicks his legs up and his trotters clack together. The sun is low over the neighbourhood. There is the smell of oncoming night, of pollen settling, the sounds of kids fighting bath time. Lester comes down, waving his hands.
Don't drown the pig, Fish. We're saving him for Christmas! We're gonna eat him.
No!
I'll drink to that, says the pig.
Lester stands there. He looks at Fish. He looks at the porker. He peeps over the fence. The pig. The flamin' pig. The pig has just spoken. It's no language that he can understand, but there's no doubt. He feels a little crook, like maybe he should go over to that tree and puke.
I like him, Lestah.
He talks?
Yep.
Oh, my gawd.
Lester looks at his retarded son again and once more at the pig.
The pig talks.
I likes him.
Yeah, I bet.
The pig snuffles, lets off a few syllables: aka sembon itwa. It's tongues, that's what it is. A blasted Pentecostal pig.
And you understand him?
Yep. I likes him.
Always the miracles you don't need. It's not a simple world, Fish. It's not.”
― Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

“I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living
”
― Tim Winton, Breath