A Quote by Wilbur Smith

I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.

Wilbur Smith

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Africa Also Boarding Boarding School Books British Cold Eight Equivalent Food Full Gold Great Had Hunter Library Me Parents Public Public School Rotten School Sent Showers Slave Slave Trade South South Africa Then Wanted White

Quote Author

Wilbur Smith
British - Novelist
Born: January 9, 1933

I grew up in a very white, privileged, old-fashioned society in South Africa and went to a boarding school run by nuns.

Prue Leith

I grew up in the South Wales valleys, but I think my parents realised from quite an early age that if they hadn't sent me to boarding school I would have probably gone to prison. And it cost them absolutely everything.

Thighpaulsandra

My parents sent me from Venezuela to the Convent of Our Lady, a boarding school in Hastings, which was horrible - like Harry Potter without the magic. Sometimes we went into town, and if we were caught chewing gum in our uniform, members of the public would take down our names and report us to the school.

Carmen Busquets

When I was 10 I went to the Drakensberg Boys Choir School, which is this idyllic Harry Potter-esque music boarding school in the mountains in South Africa, and that's when everything started to change for me and I realised that music is my thing.

St. Lucia

The only place I considered home was the boarding school, in Yorkshire, my parents sent me to.

Joe Strummer

Hunter High School was a real turning point for me. I found out about its existence through the music school. Nobody I knew had gone to one of these special high schools, and my teachers didn't think it was possible to get in. But Hunter sent me a practice exam, and I studied what I needed to know to pass the exam.

Mildred Dresselhaus

Once I took a bus from my home in Maryland to Philadelphia to live on the streets with some musicians for a few weeks, and then my parents sent me to boarding school at Andover to shape me up.

Olivia Wilde

My parents divorced when I was seven. Because divorce is messy, for good or ill, they sent me to boarding school.

Jack Davenport

I have a theory that if you've got the kind of parents who want to send you to boarding school, you're probably better off at boarding school.

Wendy Cope

I was a boarding school product from the age of eight, and I hated it. Though I do have a theory that boarding school is good training for writers because its so desperately lacking in privacy: you make space for yourself by having an interior life.

Simon Mawer

When I was 13, I won a scholarship to boarding school. My parents let me choose whether to go, and I decided I wanted to. Afterwards, I went to Cambridge to study law - in a way, I was carrying the academic hopes of my family, as Mum and Dad left school at 14.

Stephen Mangan

Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.

Katherine Paterson

The only thing I wanted when I left school was independence. I had been at boarding school for many years. When you're boarding, nothing is your own and your whole day is scheduled. You're told when to sleep, what to eat and when. You have zero independence.

Karren Brady

The first thing I remember when I moved to a school in the suburbs was, 'My gosh, all these books!' The classroom and school had a library; I'd never seen so many books in my life! It was something we didn't have in the township.

Petina Gappah

I had a very happy childhood. But I was sent off to boarding school at quite a young age, this massive Victorian house that was suffocated in ivy. I think there is a part of that school in 'Heap House.'

Edward Carey

I spent a lot of my childhood saying goodbye because I went to boarding school. I didn't resent my parents for sending me there so young as I understood the limitations of the education system in Africa, where we lived at the time.

Chris de Burgh

A Quote by Wilbur Smith

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