New Zealander Quotes

We used to say that he who threw the biggest tantrum won the day.

So I think rather than being attracted so much now to working with my heroes, I'm sort of more attracted to working with completely unlikely strangers because it's more exciting really.

Our motto is whenever you make a mistake, do it twice.

I'm a lifer, yeah... I can honestly say I'm a lifer.

I try to put myself into unusual and difficult situations as often as I can in order to capture the element of struggle in the music.

I love being in the studio.

It took me a long time, but I don't feel as anxious about stupid things anymore - or perhaps they've just been replaced by more complicated stupid things.

Any time you play someone who is alive, well, very much in the public eye, and has a huge audience who admire, respect and look to them for inspiration, you want to do the best you can.

We in the west are seen as godless, as greedy and as uncaring about the suffering of those in the developing world.

We can survive as a population only if we conserve, develop sustainably, and protect the world's resources.

There is no glory in war, yet from the blackness of its history, there emerge vivid colours of human character and courage. Those who risked their lives to help their friends.

The rights of the individual are greatly prized in the developed world, but in many other regions they are considered a luxury reserved for the impossibly wealthy.

The domination of western values, beliefs and way of life has angered many from the east and in developing countries.

If we are genuinely committed to promoting a culture of peace, as individuals we must look to our values and ensure that we all exhibit a peace loving life to our nation's children.

We often plough so much energy into the big picture, we forget the pixels.

Those who kept their sanity and humanity intact in the face of awful adversity. Heroes named and unnamed, some known only to God.

The quest for peace begins in the home, in the school and in the workplace.

I think feature film can be quite conservative, because you have to now get audiences to come out, and it's quite a hard thing to do. Of course, television can be conservative too.

I seem to have been able to make a career out of doing what I feel like doing, so why not keep doing it? What's corrupting is wanting to be more important. You want to be more arty - you get your identity from that. Or you get your identity out of making more money.

I love it when actors come to you with a problem and you have to listen. You'd like them to just get on with it, but it often means that there's a problem with the script.

I have to admit that I had a lot of problems with poetry.

I had this spooky psychological thing about 'The Piano' before it began, which was how everybody was going to go nuts on the set. Because a film tends to set up the way people are going to behave.

I feel that directors at times are like the janitors on the set. I am the secretary, I am the organizer, I am the maid, and I ask if they have eaten or rested. The best things are always out of your control. It's those moments that surpass the imagination that are thrilling.

I don't belong to any clubs, and I dislike club mentality of any kind, even feminism - although I do relate to the purpose and point of feminism. More in the work of older feminists, really, like Germaine Greer.

I didn't like England. I couldn't take the look of the place or the style of friendship. I need more intimacy from people than is considered okay there, and I felt that my personality and my enthusiasms weren't understood. I had to put a big lid on myself.

I did this Super-8 film at art school called 'Tissues,' this black comedy about a family whose father has been arrested for child molestation. I was absolutely thrilled by every inch of it, and would throw my projector in the back of my car and show it to anybody who would watch it.

I can't imagine people telling me what to do - I just can't imagine it.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

For me, being a director is about watching, not about telling people what to do. Or maybe it's like being a mirror; if they didn't have me to look at, they wouldn't be able to put the make-up on.

Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats's world by Andrew Motion's biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats's letters and his poems. The letters were fresh, intimate and irreverent, as though he were present and speaking. The Keats spell went very deep for me.