Famous Quotes

"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."

Wilbur Smith on Death

More quotes about Death

• "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."

  Martin Luther King, Jr. on Death

• "To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent."

  Buddha on Death

• "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

  Albert Einstein on Death

• "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

  Mark Twain on Death

• "Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see."

  Helen Keller on Death

More quotes by Wilbur Smith

• "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."

• "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."

• "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 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."

• "I hate politics. I like to write about it, but to get involved in it, to try and make a lot of ignorant people do what you want them to do, waste of time. Go and write a book. It's more important and it'll last longer."