Top 885 Quotes & Sayings by New Zealander Authors - Page 15

There are songs from dreams that I had. Relationships, I get a lot of inspo from those. I mean, I've written a song about a spider. It comes from everywhere.

Beforehand you think, 'Oh, changing nappies - I'm going to be up; I need to get sleep for training.' But when it happens, when you're there, as soon as you hear a wiggle or a cough or something, you're up straight away. It doesn't bother you.

The world is slowly evolving into a place where the things that we have seen as being taboo are starting to open up a bit more.

I believe in greater self-sufficiency. International sport is tough, no doubt, but there shouldn't be too many crutches. In most cases sports psychologists are crutches, and they tend to soften rather than harden the players.

I absolutely love being a mother. It's been a blessing. It's fun and it's hard, but it's absolutely amazing.

Music is a great part of my life. It helps me relax and keep calm whenever I am not boxing.

You can get too close as a team. You need time away from each other. You change in the same dressing room, you play on the same cricket field, you stay in the same hotel, you travel in the same planes and buses. C'mon - this business of everyone holding hands and being pally is nonsense.

I've said in the primary race repeatedly that a Labour Party that I lead would be a true red Labour Party, be very clear about its social democratic roots and its social democratic agenda.

I think that's what all New Zealanders who are fair-minded want - a good chance for everybody to get ahead, whether it's education or housing.

I like pre-production and post the best. I don't like shooting at all. I find it grueling and tough, but I love post and the whole process of seeing the film finally come together. You start ironing out all the rough spots, and the really bad bits you just throw away. So from day one of post to the last day, you see nothing but improvements.

I went out with this boy on the proviso that he didn't tell anybody we were together. The idiot didn't keep his mouth shut. I dumped him. I never went out with a boy from school again.

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.

I think I want to produce action movies.

You have to talk about why things happened the way they did. You can't actually explain my political life except by a series of situations rather than by some carefully constructed, rigidly progressed ascendancy.

Whatever role the coaches decide for me and the team, I'm happy with that.

I was a manual labourer. I figured out really early on that the value of my life could be determined by my hourly rate as a manual labourer digging holes.

Martial arts are inherently both incredibly impressive and incredibly beautiful. And that's my female nature, maybe, and my instinct, to make things beautiful.

For me, playing a chubby or fat superhero was so special because I would go and watch these movies with my friends and would never see anyone like me. I am excited to be that for other kids who look like me.

I'll be seeking professional help with regards to alcohol and, until myself and the club feel this is under control, I'll be off the drink.

I've always loved the Bond pictures. I have watched every single one. Movies don't get bigger or better than Bond, so I knew this was my opportunity to do a massive action picture with outrageous stunts.

I went to a Cal Tech party after the 'Facebook' movie came out, and there were kids in dark rooms coding because it was cool again. That movie made it cool to sit in a room at a party and write code.

I think there was a petition online to get me involved in 'Doctor Who.' I'm not a 'Doctor Who' fanatic, but I am a Steven Moffat fanatic.

Inevitably any series that goes on too long will reach a point where it starts struggling for ideas, so I've always been really aware of getting out while the going's good.

You can't have eyes on the wall, or the angels won't come in. That's what we believe.

I don't think I'm a good-enough songwriter.

I'm part Maori. My mum's Maori, and she raised me. And my grandma, she's Maori.

I have a massive Samoan family. And the Samoan culture has always played a massive part of my life. I've got hundreds of family on my dad's side that live in Samoa and in New Zealand. I've just been surrounded by the culture ever since I was a kid.

Knocking someone out cold means you just caught them, that's all.

My children are my children. There's no doubt about that at all. They're very strong towards me, very protective, and I towards them. It works both ways.

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kant's idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, it's an evolved machine that we carry with us.

Our mental skills expert Gilbert Enoka is just amazing the work he does.

With every film I've made, 'Whale Rider' included, I've had a vision that was far bigger than the budget allowed.

My dad, he can cook, but he can't cook: it's sort of like 50/50.

As a kid in New Zealand, you play cricket in summer and rugby in winter. I played cricket and hockey. Not rugby. I wasn't brawny enough for it. Or silly enough, perhaps.

I write with teenagers in mind.

I've always got on very well with the French, perhaps because I'm very natural.

It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask.

Towards the end of 2003 it was hard to get through training - and the darkest point was when a doctor told me there was a possibility I could end up in a wheelchair.

I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.

Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.

IndyCar is what it is and in the back of our minds we all know it is a dangerous sport.

I'm really passionate about music. I do love acting, but music is the end goal for me.

When it comes to a specific sound, I don't feel like there's something I need to worry about. I'd much rather do something creative and credible. Like, 'Who am I? What am I trying to say? What do I stand for?' I stand for all of it, because I feel all of it, like everybody.

I feel very strongly influenced by long-form box-set TV drama... I feel really excited that, at last, the novel has found its on-screen equivalent, because the emotional arcs and changes that you can follow are just so much more like a novel, and so many amazing shows recently have done as much as film can do to show the interior world.

If people say to me, 'So, what were you doing in Dubai in that song?' or they spend ages comparing me to some other singer, I just shut down, I guess.