Bryce Courtenay, AM (14 August 1933 – 22 November 2012) was a South African/Australian advertising director and novelist. He is one of Australia's best-selling authors, notable for his book The Power of One.
Let me conclude by saying in my experience the glittering prizes in life come more to those who persevere despite setback and disappointment than they do to the exceptionally gifted who, with the confidence of the talents bestowed upon them, often pursue the tasks leading to success with less determination.
The imagination is always the best torturer.
It's not what a man does, it's what a man is that counts!
I'm going to die with my mind intact. And to me that is the most exciting way you could possibly die.
If you don't know where you are going, then how will you get there? VISUALISE! Make pictures in your mind. See the desination. Imagine your arrival. Dream in perfect detail. See yourself the way you want to be when you arrive. See yourself arriving. Make yourself a road map and study it every day until you know the way and the destination by heart.
sometimes in life doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency
I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end.
Words are like diamonds. Polish them too much, and all you get are pebbles.
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.
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.
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.
Inside all people there is love, also the need to take care of the other man who is his brother. Inside everyone is a savage, but there is also happening tenderness and compassion.
It's good to be a little frightened. It's good to respect your opponent. It keeps you sharp. In the fight game, the head rules the heart. But in the end the heart is the boss.
If I were king of the world there wouldn't be boat people, there would only be people coming in boats. I would mix us all up so that we were all exactly one shade of each other.
I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of the stream.
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.
People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.
It's been a privilege to write for you and to have you accept me as a storyteller in your lives, Now, as my story draws to an end, may I say only, `Thank you. You have been simply wonderful'.
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.
But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope.