It's dark already and I'm out here again, talking, telling the story to the quiet night. Tim Winton More Quotes by Tim Winton More Quotes From Tim Winton I 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 Winton tongue squash green Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy. Tim Winton distance emotional past Humour's the pay-off for all that existential horror. Tim Winton existential horror pay Whatever you believe, you need faith to get through the day. Tim Winton believe needs We live in specific places. We are marked by a place. Tim Winton Life is wild by definition. And organic existence is violent. Though I find this hard to accept. And I know it goes against the cultural grain of therapeutic smoothing so dominant in what we like to call 'cultural discourse'. Tim Winton violent definitions life-is I went to school for 12 years, and uni for four, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study. Tim Winton children years school I can't make something 'useful' to me in a writing sense for a very long time. I don't have any journalistic instinct. And I do keep a journal, but it's neither very revealing nor fruitful for work. Stuff just bubbles up from the swamp later. Tim Winton swamps writing long The blank page doesn't bother me. It's the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It's worse when I'm not making stuff up. Tim Winton pages voice giving In fiction 'issues' are accidental, sometimes incidental. The place and the people it creates are paramount. Tim Winton issues people fiction I 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 Winton writing art school 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 Winton different parent trying What I'm saying so badly is we're bred now to believe we're in control and should be in control. Tim Winton should believe I don't think it's people's utterances that limit the writing. It's the activity itself. It's actually pretty hard to convey to someone who's not a surfer. The sensation is the thing. And it's tough to describe without resorting to clichés or mystical nonsense. Tim Winton writing people thinking I 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 Winton assuming adults ideas Overfishing is an obvious threat to our capacity to feed ourselves. Tim Winton obvious threat capacity A problem not so well understood is the growing presence of plastics in the marine food chain. If we don't make big changes fast, the fish we do save may no longer be safe to eat. Tim Winton marine growing may I grew up in a whaling town. We didn't stop whaling in Australia until 1978. And I've always lived in fishing communities. You could say I'm from the Redneck Wing of marine conservation. Everything I know about the sea I learnt at the end of a spear or a hook. Seems weird to admit it, but I hunted and killed my way to enlightenment. Eventually you see where you've been. All the traces you leave are gaps and absences. And it's a sick feeling, knowing you might bequeath a full dose of Nothing to those who come after you. Tim Winton redneck marine knowing Optimism is necessary even if you don't instinctively feel it. Tim Winton optimism ifs feels Whether 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 Winton water order people
