Bryce Courtenay Quotes & Sayings

I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of the stream. — Bryce Courtenay

The Tragedy of the human condition is that the very things that make us interesting and culturally important and progressively brilliant are our differences; and these are also the principle reasons for our prejudices — Bryce Courtenay

I watch people get older and lose their intellectual acuity; you lose that sharpness, that cleanness, that brain that you worked so hard on and that you were gifted with and lose the gifts that were given. — Bryce Courtenay

In each of us there is a flame that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it burns within us, we cannot be destroyed. — Bryce Courtenay

Inside all people there is love, also the need to take care of the other man who is his brother. Inside everyone is a savage, but there is also happening tenderness and compassion. — Bryce Courtenay

Advertising was only meant to be a very small part of my life. I had intended that I would work extensively in journalism for about five or six years and then I'd become a writer. — Bryce Courtenay

Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark. — Bryce Courtenay

Always listen to yourself ... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. — Bryce Courtenay

The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, ofen well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete, the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. — Bryce Courtenay

It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day. — Bryce Courtenay

Sweet potatoes in their jackets have a large comfort value built into them — Bryce Courtenay

I spoke the language the sentences that had lied their grandfathers and sent their grandmothers to the worlds first concentration camps. — Bryce Courtenay

First with the head, then with the heart — Bryce Courtenay

When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win. — Bryce Courtenay

It's good to be a little frightened. It's good to respect your opponent. It keeps you sharp. In the fight game, the head rules the heart. But in the end the heart is the boss. — Bryce Courtenay

In this world there are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. — Bryce Courtenay

You've got to be quick on your feet in this world if you want to survive. Though once you know the rules, it is not too hard to play the game. — Bryce Courtenay

I guess my use-by date is just about up but if I could come back as a storyteller now, I would be jumping over the moon because wow, just think what's available. — Bryce Courtenay

The imagination is always the best torturer. — Bryce Courtenay

Words are like diamonds. Polish them too much, and all you get are pebbles. — Bryce Courtenay

When a man knows somebody cares he keeps some small place, a corner maybe of his soul clean and lit. — Bryce Courtenay

I'm going to die with my mind intact. And to me that is the most exciting way you could possibly die. — Bryce Courtenay

Innocents, the meat in a ghastly sandwich between an uncaring society and a vengeful state. — Bryce Courtenay

Boldness, at first a stranger to be treated with caution, soon becomes a friend, then a partner, and finally taken for granted, as is the daily relationship between married people. — Bryce Courtenay

Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance.
-Doc — Bryce Courtenay

Your brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been — Bryce Courtenay

Humans best survive when they are given a purpose; a common enemy to defeat, revenge to wreak or a dream to cling to. — Bryce Courtenay

Dare your genius to walk the wildest unknown ways. — Bryce Courtenay

Around a proposition or an idea or story willingly. Some — Bryce Courtenay

Storytellers are the keepers - we are the time keepers, the continuity keepers. We are the people who tell us who we are, where we've come from, and maybe even where we're going. — Bryce Courtenay

As a small child I had discovered that only two places are available to those who wish to remain concealed. The choices are to be a nonentity or an exception. You either disappear into a plebeian background or move forward to where most others fear to follow. — Bryce Courtenay

I was born illegitimately and almost immediately, as I understand it, placed in an orphanage. So my very earliest memories were in an orphanage. It was the tag end of the Great Depression when I was born. People were desperately poor. — Bryce Courtenay

I Shall Never Surrender. — Bryce Courtenay

The rich become rich by taking, and the poor by giving. — Bryce Courtenay

I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end. — Bryce Courtenay

Generosity overpowers greed. — Bryce Courtenay

What is a german? to say a man is a german, what is that? does it tell you if he is a good man? or a bad man? no, my friend, it tells you nothing about a man to say he is german. a man must think what he is inside. what he is on the outside, how can this matter? — Bryce Courtenay

It's nothing to be ashamed of. There comes a time in everything when you don't know something. — Bryce Courtenay

Then I felt like having a piss and I did that — Bryce Courtenay

The rapacious white tribe who were arriving in increasing numbers, not only as convicts but also as settlers, wanted to own everything they touched. They slashed and burned the wilderness so that they might graze their sheep and grow their corn. They erected fences around the land they now called their own and which henceforth they were prepared to defend with muskets and sometimes even their lives. They built church steeples and prison walls and homes of granite hewn from the virgin rock and timber cut from the umbrageous mountain forests. They possessed everything upon the island, the wild beasts that grazed upon its surface, the birds that flew over it, the fish that swam in its rushing river torrents and the barking seals resting in the quiet bays and secluded inlets. Everything they thought worthwhile was attached to the notion of ownership. — Bryce Courtenay

You couldn't lose, you was playing Mozart — Bryce Courtenay

The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life, and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language. — Bryce Courtenay

I had never seen a prison, nor had I even imagined one, but there is a racial memory in man that instinctively knows of these things. The architecture of misery has an unmistakable look and feel about it. — Bryce Courtenay

Good conversational debate is an end in itself, and talking for the love of conversation is what makes us human. — Bryce Courtenay

The joy of a small town lies in its unchanging nature. — Bryce Courtenay

Besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child. — Bryce Courtenay

Sometimes, very occasionally, you do your best boxing with your mouth. — Bryce Courtenay

Let me conclude by saying in my experience the glittering prizes in life come more to those who persevere despite setback and disappointment than they do to the exceptionally gifted who, with the confidence of the talents bestowed upon them, often pursue the tasks leading to success with less determination. — Bryce Courtenay

Mediocrity is the best camouflage known to man. — Bryce Courtenay

In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery. — Bryce Courtenay

is intended to break the spirit, to render harmless those who are thought to be harmful. — Bryce Courtenay

I felt clean, all the bone-beaked loneliness birds banished, their rocky nests turned to river stones. Cool, clear water bubbled over them, streams in the desert. — Bryce Courtenay

God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with color ... only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business. — Bryce Courtenay

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people. — Bryce Courtenay

It seemed certain now that small could defeat big. All it took was brains and skills and heart and a perfect plan. — Bryce Courtenay

Never take advice from a donkey. — Bryce Courtenay

Cleverness is a false presumption', Doc had explained, 'it is like being a natural skater, you are so busy doing tricks to impress that you do not see where the thin ice is and before you know, poof! You are in deep, ice-cold water frozen like a dead herring. Intelligence is a harder gift, for this you must work, you must practise it, challenge it and maybe towards the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow whereas intelligence is the substance. — Bryce Courtenay

Sometimes in life doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency — Bryce Courtenay

Without courage, there is no luck and no hope. He who dares, wins. — Bryce Courtenay

If I were king of the world there wouldn't be boat people, there would only be people coming in boats. I would mix us all up so that we were all exactly one shade of each other. — Bryce Courtenay

Life is all beginnings and ends. Nothing stays the same, lad. — Bryce Courtenay

The time we are given for parenting is so short, passes so quickly and is jumbled up with so many other priorities and disruptions that, in the end, we come to doubt that we used it in the best interests of our children. — Bryce Courtenay

As is so often the case with a legend, every incident has two possible interpretations, the plausible and the one that is molded to suit the making of the myth. Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, plodding reason for the excitement of an enigma. As Doc had pointed out, mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own insignificance. — Bryce Courtenay

You can't go feeding your hate on the past, it's not natural. — Bryce Courtenay

Mix the head with the heart, and you're ahead from the start. — Bryce Courtenay

But I started to realize that it doesn't begin like this, that anybody can be the target for prejudice, all you have to be is "too" something . Too short, too fat, too clever, too big, too small, too slow, too new, "too different" from what others think of as normal. — Bryce Courtenay

Over all this lay Hoppie's dictum: First with the head and then with the heart. Winning was something you worked at intellectually, emotion clouds the mind and is its natural enemy. This made for a loneliness which often let me aching to share an emotion but equally afraid that if I did so I would reveal a weakness which could later be used against me. — Bryce Courtenay

Every man is an island and at the same time also robinson crusoe. — Bryce Courtenay

And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven. — Bryce Courtenay

A man on the run finds compassion or loveor even pretended innocence his greatest source of danger. — Bryce Courtenay

The only thing that's authentic about what a writer writes is his work. — Bryce Courtenay

One thing is certain in life. Just when things are going well, soon afterward they are certain to go wrong. It's just the way things are meant to be. — Bryce Courtenay

It's not what a man does, it's what a man is that counts! — Bryce Courtenay

Small can beat big, but you must have a plan. — Bryce Courtenay

The man assumes the role of the loner, the thinker and the searching spirit who calls the privileged and the powerful to task. The power of one was the courage to remain separate, th think through the truth and not be beguiled by convention or the plausible arguments of those who expect to maintain power, whatever the cost. — Bryce Courtenay

Love is energy: it can neither be created nor destroyed. It just is and always will be, giving meaning to life and direction to goodness ... Love will never die. — Bryce Courtenay

I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country. — Bryce Courtenay

He was notorious for cutting short extraneous verbiage from over-loquacious barristers". — Bryce Courtenay

It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone. — Bryce Courtenay

Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise. — Bryce Courtenay

Turning to Ann Gower, she smiled. "You're a good woman, Ann Gower."
Ann Gower drew back and looked askance at Mary. "Don't you go ruinin' me reputation, Mary Abacus. I be a real bad woman, but a bloody good whore, and you knows it! — Bryce Courtenay

But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope. — Bryce Courtenay

My job is essentially that of an entertainer, no different to that of a musician, no different to that of an actor. I just happen to be an author. — Bryce Courtenay

Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.' He looked at me and continued. 'The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous.' His piercing blue eyes looked into mine.' Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life. — Bryce Courtenay

People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents. — Bryce Courtenay

A sentiment, coming from it is not to be trusted. — Bryce Courtenay

I tell myself lies and soon I believe them. — Bryce Courtenay

In teaching me independence of thought, they had given me the greatest gift an adult can give to a child besides love, and they had given me that also. — Bryce Courtenay

If you don't know where you are going, then how will you get there? VISUALISE! Make pictures in your mind. See the desination. Imagine your arrival. Dream in perfect detail. See yourself the way you want to be when you arrive. See yourself arriving. Make yourself a road map and study it every day until you know the way and the destination by heart. — Bryce Courtenay

I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed. — Bryce Courtenay

The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. Hoppie's dictum to me, "First with the head and then with the heart," was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts. — Bryce Courtenay

While I told myself that each win was a small deposit on the ultimate ownership of the world welterweight crown, the enormous need in me to win touched a whole heap of other responses a fourteen years old can't really work out. It had something to do with rejecting the Lord, with my mother, the Judge, being surrounded by guys who came from wealthy homes, even my headless snake. While I didn't think of it as camouflage, I now know that it was, that I kept myself protected by being out in front. Too far in front to be an easy mark. — Bryce Courtenay

My job, and that's my job, is to dress the naked truth. To make it interesting, to make it viable, to make it seem like something you understand and feel and love. — Bryce Courtenay

The thing about fires most people don't realise is the noise. It's deafening so even if you shout, you can't be heard three feet away. You can never quite get used to the fury of it, it's like a mighty roar of anger that just keeps going. I suppose flame is beautiful, the way it leaps into the air like it's free to do what it wants. Other elements are also free and I guess the sea can be pretty awesome, wind too, and lightning, but fire has a mind and a determination. You don't see it as a blind raging thing, which I suppose it is, but something that attacks and thinks and changes tactics. It has a malevolence that uses surprise, dirty tricks, cunning. You get to think of it as someone, not something, and it's someone you have to beat, but right from the start you don't like your chances because it's so big and unpredictable and can do so much harm. — Bryce Courtenay

Racism does not diminish with brains, it's a disease, a sickness, it may incubate in ignorance but it doesn't necessarily disappear with the gaining of wisdom! — Bryce Courtenay

My only desire is to teach the word o' man and leave the word o' Gawd to the pulpit men — Bryce Courtenay

What's the point in being an unpopular writer? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. For me it doesn't, anyway. — Bryce Courtenay

First with the head and then with the heart. — Bryce Courtenay

I am essentially an entertainer and a storyteller. — Bryce Courtenay

Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it. — Bryce Courtenay