Bryce Courtenay Best Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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 Shall Never Surrender. — Bryce Courtenay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do. — 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