Top 15 Tim Winton Quotes

She was sick of conversations with people passing through. Nothing you said to each other mattered a damn because you'd never see them again.

Inside his mother is silent at the stove. Her face is shut down. It's nothing new. The table's set. He washes his hands and, newly protected by his thoughts, settles himself into the silence she's prepared for him. He already knows what his mother thinks. To her, the world is a treacherous place. Nothing lasts. People cheat. They leave. They just up and go. Sooner or later they all bolt and you're left on your own, and the look of reproach she gives him now is but a variation on her whole demeanour, the assumption in every glance, every sigh, every mute chink of cutlery, is that he too will leave her high and dry, just as the old man did three years ago. He's fifteen and it's old news. He feels sorry for her, protective still, but he's had a gutful. He wants her to get over it but he senses that it's beyond her.

Though it seemed so beautiful, the world around us was eternally dangerous. The price of spiritual freedom, we learnt, was eternal vigilance. Such a high price for so long.

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

It seemed that these were Joneses who didn't need much keeping up with.

All the big things hurt, the things you remember. If it doesn't hurt it's not important.

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

It's one thing to think someone's stupid. And fair enough if you need them to be. But you can't go banking on it. That's a mug's game.

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

Still you can't keep doing the coulda and the woulda and the shoulda. And if there's one thing I know it's this. Doesn't matter how smart you are, or even how careful or lucky, there's some mistakes you just keep making over and over.

I suspect that God is what you do, not what or who you believe in. When you do right, Jaxie, when you make good - well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the divine, to the life force, to life itself. That's what I believe. That's what I hope for. And it's what I have missed. Think of it this way. When somebody does me a kindness, it enlarges me, adds to my life, you see? And not only mine - it adds to all life.

There isn't one thing in the world hot and hard as knowing there's someone waiting, coming, pressing, wanting you.

Our stories. We store them where moth and rust destroy. We're precious about them, no? Not because we treasure them at all, but because it's safer to hold them close. Am I reading you right? Do we have that much in common?

"Sometimes it's a mighty struggle to know what's real and what's just . . . a mirage. You understand?" "Yeah," I said.

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.