Top 885 Quotes & Sayings by New Zealander Authors - Page 12

I can't for the life of me see that by being permissive you actually assist anyone.

How do I take a step? How do I lift my foot off the ground, move it through the air a little bit and then bring it down? I had to teach myself to walk again.

I played around with GarageBand before, but I'd never actually made a proper song. So it was getting into the studio with him where I made my first proper song. I've always loved creative writing, so I had done that as well.

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

Because I've been on the receiving end of infidelity, I know how much it hurts.

When there's no boundaries, that's when you can get creative.

Tragedy makes you grow up.

Whatever it is that I do, it's a lot easier for me to accomplish it when I truly feel the need for it. Sometimes you forget. But all you have to do is stop, re-think, and put it all back into perspective.

Sometimes you see a movie and you can really feel that it's an actor putting in a performance. Someone said 'cut' and they're back in their trailer having a coffee or getting their hair done.

I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.

There is humor in the darkest of moments - People who I have loved and passed away, and very high stake situations where you can't help but laugh. I think that's very human.

I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.

Coming from New Zealand and Australia is like a tough pre-school for Hollywood. And having been on 'Neighbours,' even though the agents I met with hadn't seen it, they knew it's where Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce had come from. It was a foot in the door.

I'm a school teacher, and later on, well past my formal education, I became very interested in science.

I don't eat eggs.

The stuff I'm passionate about is what I write; it isn't multi-million-dollar franchise movies.

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

My goal was to become a 'good singer' rather than a 'different singer.'

The government's position was that we have frigates that have got a useful life until 2006. There is no necessity for us to make final decisions until 2002.

Everything I've ever thought about doing has been, in some sense, about helping people.

The storytelling in a movie is in the cut; it's in the edit. It's not an actor's job, really. Your job is such a tiny little thing, and I love the feeling of juggling or tightrope walking.

When I was about five, I could do a vaguely decent American accent - straight through kind of decent - and 'Hercules' needed some kids. I definitely wasn't a good actor.

There are some people that just attract violence to them. No matter where they go, they'll find a fight.

Too often the desire for peace has been expressed by women while the stewardship of the mechanisms which are used to attempt to secure peace in the short and medium term are dominated by male decision-making structures and informal arrangements. This must change.

In New Zealand, men and women would not take a party seriously if it did not have a good gender - and increasingly racial - mix. It's not about being politically correct; it's just who we are.

I never actively went out and studied the American accent. I just came over here to the States, and it was something I was able to do. Like, I never struggled with it.

If you're small and can speak clearly and you're a cute kid, that's the craft, really. The whole child actor thing can be dangerous sometimes. Other kids were taking piano lessons; I did ballet and acting.

I'm high energy.

I don't like dressing up, and I don't like putting on make-up or doing the red carpet. The only red carpet events I go to are if I'm supporting a friend.

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.

We're always waiting to discover new parts of ourselves.

I met this group of stunt people and it was like, I had found family instantly. We're all a variety of different personalities, but whatever that mutual joy or appreciation of the work is, I'd not felt it like that before. It was, 'Yeah, I'd like to do this forever.'

As an actor... at some point you've got to forget that the crew's there in order to do your job.

I always seem to get parts where I play the sports professional - and that's not me at all!

My first novel was a critical success in a matter of weeks.

The fact I'm the third female Prime Minister, I never grew up believing my gender would stand in the way of doing anything I wanted.

Honestly, I'm the worst storyteller ever. Like, I just take so long.

The ridiculous events in everyday life are often overlooked - people don't recognise it as potentially cinematic.

People overcoming the odds is actually a really important part of humanity, and I don't think we kind of get to celebrate that as much as we should.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

I love that feeling you get once you leave a cinema having just watched a movie during the day. Your eyes slowly adjust to the natural light, and your mind, being a little slower, takes its time to separate the images of film from the reality you are suddenly facing.

I am very excited to be here in Wales and look forward to putting on the Cardiff Blues shirt.

Now I'm this far up the ladder and I've got so much farther to go with what I want to achieve with it.

I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.

I want to do directing and acting. I can do them at the same time - it's a challenge, but it's my dream.

My mother was a beauty queen in her hey day. That's where I learnt a little about makeup and hair... I had never picked up or even seen a 'Vogue' before I was 17. I had no idea about fashion, magazines, models or designers. No idea.

There's a side of me that dislikes feminism. I think we surrendered something and women were unable to reveal any kind of vulnerability.

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.

When I'm a stunt woman on a movie, I'm strictly a 'Yes sir,' girl... But acting puts more in your hands, and producing gives you more control still.

I felt that the studio recording process makes you stand still too long.

Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

Astrology's a moving system that depends on where you're looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand.

People sort of accuse Tolkien of not being good with female characters, and I think that Eowyn actually proves that to be wrong to some degree. Eowyn is actually a strong female character, and she's a surprisingly modern character, considering who Tolkien actually was sort of a stuffy English professor in the 1930s and '40s.

I have times when I doubt what I'm doing. When those moments hit, I think about how grateful I am to be able to do what I do every day. It was harder when I started because I didn't see the response, but now I'm out there playing for people and seeing them happy, which makes it all worthwhile.

It's a grave mistake in publishing, whether you're talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire of established reader interests.

The champagne tastes the same if you're sitting bolt upright or sunk back into a sofa, so you might as well be upright, because you look better.

I was told to have an ice bath once, which I did once, and it was the most horrific experience. In my head it sounded like a great idea, so I filled my bath with ice and water, and it was absolutely horrendous.

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.

When I do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I always go across to Loch Ness and stay there.