I've been a writer and a parent since adolescence, it feels like, and I'm still making both gigs up as I go along. I did both in different forms of isolation - too young by conventional standards, too far off-grid culturally and geographically. So my experience is probably too specific to be useful. None of us do this stuff the same way. We just try to endure and press on, I guess.
Tim WintonPeople can make symbolic gestures but doesn't mean their life changes. One philanthropic moment doesn't make a life of renewal; of change.
Tim WintonI eat green ants often enough. They are wonderful. The trick is to squash them before you eat them, otherwise they bite your tongue and it ruins the experience.
Tim WintonIt's sadness coming on like the old days, the vast seamless hopeless weight of sadness looking for a place to rest.
Tim WintonAnd though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.
Tim WintonPeople do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.
Tim WintonI liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free.
Tim WintonDifferent tenses and perspectives offer you different things. It helps to distinguish the world that they are in.
Tim WintonHunting and gathering are in my blood. But I've lived long enough to witness a diminution in the seas, and to notice a fragility where once I saw - or assumed - an endless bounty.
Tim WintonIt's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.
Tim WintonTruly brave people accept that they may not see victory in their own lifetime. You just keep at it for the sake of those who come after you. You might not win but you stand a better chance by doing something.
Tim WintonIt's terrifying to think you can remember things you shouldn't possibly be able to. It's like that childhood fear of having your soul slip from your body in your sleep. The darkness, those black sheets of glass sliding over you, upping the pressure, pushing you through the time and space and story.
Tim WintonI wanted to be a writer all my life. Since I was 10. And then at a certain point I began to assume I was one, which is rich, I know. I didn't meet a writer until I was nearly an adult, so I had no idea what I'd bet the farm on.
Tim WintonI don't consciously watch and file lived moments for my work. I have a couple of writer friends who do that and it creeps me out, to be honest. I know people think I must do that too, but I don't. But I do have a long memory.
Tim WintonWe are all part of that global traffic and I think that the effort to make yourself understood and to be not a problem for anyone or to hide your own particuarly is a mistake. I think people will and do value individuality.
Tim WintonWhen you're surfing you're not thinking about where you parked the car or what you're going to do when you grow up or what you're going to buy when you've got lots of money. You know, you're just there. You're in the moment. And I think in a contemporary world, that's a rare privilege.
Tim WintonI never start with what lots of people think of as a subject or a theme. They're school words, not art words. So, writing essays busts my arse because the art is in addressing the subject. I find it really difficult and monstrously time-consuming. In an essay I need to employ my imagination but it's indentured in a way it's not when I'm free to make everything up.
Tim WintonWhether you're in the water staring up at a looming set or standing in front of 15000 people at a demo, you have to manufacture some courage and a sense of optimism in order to get through the moment, the day, the rest of your life.
Tim WintonYet however comforting and peaceful beach-combing is, it ends up like the sea, as disturbing as it is reassuring. In dark moments I believe that walking on a beach at low tide is to be looking for death, or at least anticipating it. You will only find the dead, the spilled and the cast-off. Things torn free of their life or their place.
Tim WintonIt is always amusing to me and delightful of course that my books sell so well in America and other parts of the world. I can't imagine what people must think as they read my books in Poland. Or in Hebrew and Greek. People are reading all the stories which are about bits of Western Australia.
Tim Winton