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" My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tajiki. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye. "

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" 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? "

" I love the sea as much as I love the veldt of Africa. "

" There are people out there with an eye on my hard-earned cash who think that I am a pushover. I am not! "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I want to be seen as a good storyteller. I'm a manipulator as well. "

" My father was my god. His approval was so valuable to me. "

" Authors can only soft sell the environment. Create a wonderful story around the environment involving the characters that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind. "

" The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off. "

" 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. "

" I believe that a healthy body breeds a healthy mind. I am 74 years old now and my wife, Niso, is 38 years younger than me. She absolutely insists that I take regular exercise with her. "

" I put my soul into every book I write. "

" 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. "

" I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I go on a hunting safari at least once a year to Botswana, which is fantastic because we have a huge area of wilderness entirely to ourselves. My island covers roughly 55 acres, which again I have to myself, with nearly half a kilometre of private beach with my own jetties and boats. "

" All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk. "

" I don't know how many lions and leopards I've shot. I've shot two elephants, which was enough - never again. It's a melancholy and moving thing to hunt an elephant. It's like shooting an old man. "

" I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes. "

" 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. "

" I think money is essential to happiness and right now I wouldn't want to be anyone other than Wilbur Smith - I've had a fantastic life, rewarded far more heavily than I deserve. Maybe I'd like to be J. K. Rowling, but I'll settle for second best. "

" To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet. "

" 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! "

" They say if you drink Zambezi water with your mother's milk, you are always a slave of Africa, and I am. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Real men read my books. "