A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God's truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did what pleased him alone? Who would plow the fields and reap the harvest, if every man had the right to say, 'I don't want to do that.' In this world there is a place for every man, but every man must know his place.

— Wilbur Smith

At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.

— Wilbur Smith

If I have to die, then it's best to do so before I see everything I love, the land, the animals, the people, all of it destroyed.

— Wilbur Smith

I'm not a good father, and they're not children anymore; the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life, and they were not my people anymore.

— Wilbur Smith

I'm not a prophet; I can only use historical reality to come to a view of the future, and my view is that Africa will return to being African and not European. The advent of colonialism was foreign to the country itself, but it will return to what it was before the Europeans arrived.

— Wilbur Smith

It's not the dying but the manner of it.

— Wilbur Smith

More than weapons, we need a leader.

— Wilbur Smith

My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tahiti. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye.

— Wilbur Smith

Patriotism is a myth conceived by those old rogues to draw us into the infernal game. Let them fight as they will, but we want no part of it.

— Wilbur Smith

Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.

— Wilbur Smith