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, Weekly. 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

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

— 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 practice 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

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

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

— Bryce Courtenay

It's who you are when folks knock 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

Never take advice from a donkey.

— Bryce Courtenay

Over all this lay Hippie'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

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

— Bryce Courtenay

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

— Bryce Courtenay