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" My absolute favorite pieces are 'Rhapsody in Blue' and 'Begin the Beguine.' I play these when I am working. "
Wilbur Smith
Blue
Play
Pieces
Related Quotes:
" My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench. "
Wilbur Smith
First
World
Starting
" I put my soul into every book I write. "
Wilbur Smith
Write
Soul
Put
" It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one. "
Wilbur Smith
May
True
Book
" 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
Relationship
Life
Good
" 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
Back
Money
Good
" To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet. "
Wilbur Smith
Meet
Real
People
" The first story I ever sold was to 'Argosy' magazine, which no longer exists. That issue also contained work by several other more celebrated writers, like Ray Bradbury - so I felt I had at least one toe on the ladder. "
Wilbur Smith
First
Work
Story
" I've eaten lion, leopard, crocodile, python. I don't recommend lion. It tastes exactly like when a tomcat comes into your house and sprays. Snake and crocodile are great - a cross between lobster and chicken. "
Wilbur Smith
House
Like
Lion
" I grew up in Rhodesia on my father's ranch and every year he used to take us on safari in some remote area of the wilderness. "
Wilbur Smith
Father
Year
Used
" 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
Green
Change
Money
" This first print run of the first edition of my first novel, 'When The Lion Feeds.' back in 1964, is so rare it can fetch several thousand pounds at auction. I always wanted to be an author, and I decided to write about what I knew. "
Wilbur Smith
First
Lion
Run
" I shot my first lion at the age of 14 when a pride threatened my father's livestock while he was away on holiday. "
Wilbur Smith
Age
Pride
Lion
" 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
Creative
Got
Enjoy
" Real men read my books. "
Wilbur Smith
Read
Real
Men
" They say I'm worth either €200 million, €100 million, €50 million or €10 million, but that's something between God, the HMRC and myself. "
Wilbur Smith
God
Myself
Worth
" My father was my god. His approval was so valuable to me. "
Wilbur Smith
Valuable
Father
His
" The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been given directorships in every major company. They're billionaires! "
Wilbur Smith
Government
Black
People
" I have been blessed in many ways, and one of those is to have been born in Africa, for me a great treasure house of stories. I have been researching it since my infancy; reading about it, talking to men and women who have spent their lives in this land, living it as I have and loving it as I do. I write almost entirely from my own experience. "
Wilbur Smith
Experience
Men
Women
" My mama loved books; I became fascinated by the wonderful stories that came out of these things she held in her hand - and started to make them up myself. "
Wilbur Smith
Wonderful
Myself
She
" 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
Million
Time
Books
" I work on my novels wherever I have a PC, and I have four or five places around the world where I do have a PC. These days you can just slip a little flash drive into your top pocket, fly for 12 hours, come to another place, plug it into a computer and you are away again. "
Wilbur Smith
You
Work
World
" 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
Mother
Best
American
" 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
Life
Me
Perfect
" I'm a feminist. The women in my books in recent years have been powerful characters and I love to see a woman with a cute bottom walking past. "
Wilbur Smith
Powerful
Women
Woman
" 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
Start
Ideas
Know
" I'm not perfect and I know it. I've done all sorts of things that are frowned upon these days - big-game hunting, fishing. I still enjoy fishing but I don't kill warm-blooded animals any more - I make an exception with birds sometimes. "
Wilbur Smith
Birds
Not Perfect
Know
" I live in Cape Town but my favourite holiday destination is Hermanus, a little seaside town about a 90-minute drive away, over the pass and down to the sea, on the sunshine coast. It's where I love to escape to with my wife for a weekend every now and again. "
Wilbur Smith
Sea
Love
Sunshine
" 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
Work
Fall
Good
" I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind. "
Wilbur Smith
Ideas
Too Much
Spring
" 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
Me
Gold
Great