Tim Winton Quotes

Maybe old Pete-the-Post was right - you never really know anybody, not even those you loved. People have shadows, secrets.

Jim wanted to fish but he wanted his sons to do something else. He didn't want them to follow the standard White Point trajectory which meant bumping out of school at fifteen to end up in seaboots or prison greens.

It's a survival thing, making yourself a small target.

The past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.

Tomorrow'll be a new day. Which is really the same miserable fucking day all over again.

And you know someone's special when you never get enough of them.

I shoulda been making proper plans to go right then. But I wasn't. You ever seen a chased rabbit give in running? When he just pulls up and stands there? Like he's out of puff and out of ideas and can't put two moves together anymore? Well that was me. I shoulda been gone already. It was like I was paralysed.

Sometimes she couldn't think what jerrybuilt frame was holding her together. It wasn't willpower anymore. She'd gone past that lately. She only had will enough to make everything else work, these days. There was never enough left for her. She was like that blessed truck of Lester's, running on an empty sump.

Honestly, sometimes you'd rather be a dog. A mutt doesn't torture itself with thinking.

Nanna was the first dead person I ever saw. Her hair was blue against the pillow. And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That's what dead things are.

I knew from hunting food the thing you need most of isn't water or ammo, it's patience.

Thing is, I'm not the surrendering type. Anyway I'm looking up and down that track. It was the highway or the wildywoods. That was the decision. Between something that's real and something you hope is real. I was banking everything on this call and maybe I wasn't fully right in the head by then but I went east. Roll the dice, that's me.

For all those years when Loonie and I surfed together, having caught the bug that first morning at the Point, we never spoke about the business of beauty. We were mates but there were places our conversation simply couldn't go. There was never any doubt about the primary thrill of surfing, the huge body-rush we got flying down the line with the wind in our ears. We didn't know what endorphins were but we quickly understood how narcotic the feeling was, and how addictive it became; from day one I was stoned from just watching. We talked about skill and courage and luck - we shared all that, and in time we surfed to fool with death - but for me there was still the outlaw feeling of doing something graceful, as if dancing on water was the best and bravest thing a man could do.

Mum said school mighta been different for me if I only give a damn. Maybe it was wasted on me like the teachers said. I didn't have any philosophy in me then, so I didn't know what to listen for. Most of it was pointless crap. Don't reckon I met a single wise person all the years I stayed but like I say, I wasn't paying close attention. And the thing is I miss it a bit. That's something I never thought I'd hear myself say. I didn't know what I was, what I could do. Except the lame things I did do.

I wondered what I woulda done if I'd missed that euro. But that was like wondering what your life'd be like if your dad wasn't a douche.