Top 885 Quotes & Sayings by New Zealander Authors - Page 4

There's a bunch of Stephen King books I love. 'Salem's Lot' was always one of my favourites. 'It.' 'Needful Things.' Moving away from King, and 'Silence of the Lambs' is always a good choice.

When I'm alone at home, I really prefer to listen to Wagner's orchestral music rather than any vocal music. I find it illuminating not to have to pay attention to voices in the recordings.

I always take notes on my phone of lyric ideas.

Work's a way of life. It's the way you live; it's what you do, and it's how it is. It's not work. It's a lifestyle. It's life. It's what one does. You can't not work.

The Way is not a religion: Christianity is the end of religion. 'Religion' means here the division between sacred and secular concerns, other-worldliness, man's reaching toward God in a way which projects his own thoughts.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

I eat tons, three full meals a day, and I never go to the gym. When I was a child, my geography teacher said, 'You may be slim now but if you carry on eating like that, you'll end up being really fat.' Fortunately, I really don't think I've changed much in the past two decades, so that teacher was an idiot.

When men don't fear God, they give themselves to evil.

Whether it be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or dealing with your children, life is an adventure, and it's how you perceive it.

In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them.

I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been.

A good education should leave much to be desired.

They meant abnormal. Divisions of the kind were fashionable at that time, and it was so easy to stifle one's need to help by deciding that help could neither be accepted nor understood.

It's not ideal when art is seen as just some passing entertainment quickly thrown out into the market, like a consumer object. You have to let things settle and think about them.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

I'm not a 3-D man; I'm a 2-D man.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; it's a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

There is one major problem with anti-virus software: It needs updating. Users cannot be relied upon to have even the anti-virus software in the first place, let alone be able or willing to pay for the updates.

This is the difficulty about talking about it without sounding big-headed, but you cannot speak of New Zealand now without my involvement in what it has become.

Probably the biggest thing is the private planes. Wow, that thing's amazing. Got all the food on there, a bunch of drinks. I don't know, It's just amazing, never seen nothing like it. Tables, tables on planes, that's amazing. That was probably the biggest 'whoa' for me, like, 'I made it'. This big private jet, you're like, 'Whoa.'

I was on dialysis for 18 months before the transplant, so it was important I tried to look ahead to days like my comeback this Saturday. You need those big goals to drive you on.

Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance.

When Jesus calls his disciples 'brothers' and 'friends', he is contradicting general Jewish usage and breaking through into a new concept of brotherhood which is not tribal, but open to any person.

People always say its an aggressive and bad sport and just like street fighting, but it's not the same thing. You go into work at the gym every day, and it takes away from being an aggressive person in public. You're training every day, and you're losing that aggression for the public.

I don't really take into account what the media says. People have their own opinions about what goes on, but they don't see what goes on behind the scenes with an athlete and their preparation.

I can't say I'm not nervous at all with media and doing speeches, but I'm getting used to it and better at it, hopefully.

In boxing, there are lot of things that happen where they try to slow down the process and try to get to the other team, trying to get into our heads.

My dad was very fun and very adventurous, and from a formative age I learned to value men who would do things on a whim.

If you want to be the champ, you've got to beat the champ.

For the first time in my life, I put my body and reputation on the line to stand up for my beliefs and do the right thing. I hope I've encouraged other people to do the same.

We are forced by the major publishers to include electronic rights in the contracts we make with publishers for new books. And there's very little we can do about that.

The Tolkien estate owns the writings of Professor Tolkien. 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' were sold by Professor Tolkien in the late '60s, the film rights.

We grew into something that we didn't even know was possible.

To me, regardless of who's in office, the government is strangled by business. And the government's priorities are dictated by business. I mean, why does America, even after healthcare reform, still not have free universal healthcare? I'm sure it has something to do with the insurance lobby.

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you.

Marine protected areas, and particularly no-take zones, are very effective in allowing regeneration of fish stocks.

We've all forgotten how to be original.

I mention this fact as tending to support what I have often heard stated, namely, that a shark's sense of smell is so keen that, if men ever bathe in seas where they are found, a shark is almost sure to appear directly afterwards.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

I acquired quite a lot of technical skill and got quite a long way with my painting, but I never felt I was doing what New Zealand was about with my paint.

Honestly, Americans are more open-minded and have the patience and the time for new types of music. In Australia and New Zealand, you must earn your place.

Of course as a small country you're not necessarily in the strongest negotiating position unless you're negotiating with other small countries.

The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics.

Heath, I believed in him when I first met him, and helped and supported him. He went on to obvious success in the States and then I had him support me. It can be a lonely, horrible, hard place. It's great just to have someone to call to say 'I know, man, I was there'

When I was a kid, I thought I saw a ghost in the forest when I was on a bush walk, like a walk through the forest. I saw something weird pass from one side of the track to the other, and it was sort of a white, blurry... it's hard to describe, really - something that was almost see-through, but it just moved in front of me.

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

If you have a little extra parking, I err on the side of getting rid of it in favor of having some more greenery.

Writing is a passion I have never understood, yet a storyteller is all I have ever wanted to be.

People might think I'm a bit more intimidating than I am.

Each of us should think of the future. Every puff on a cigarette is another tick closer to a time bomb of terrible consequences. Christopher Hitchens didn't care about the consequences of smoking cigarettes. Tragically, he died of throat cancer in December 2011.

It's a non-stop invention, this game of life, and as soon as you think you've got it, you lose it.

I grew up on a farm playing backyard footie in my bare feet.

I was shooting a mini-series for Sundance/BBC, called 'Top of the Lake,' that was shot by Jane Campion, who's a beautiful native New Zealander and famous film director. The role I was playing was very intense, and they shaved half my hair off. So, I looked like this post-apocalyptic character.

Whale Rider' was a very authentic and specific movie about the indigenous culture from where I come. Amazingly, by the fact it was so authentic and so specific, it became really powerfully universal.

Alex O'Loughlin is an old friend. Actually, when he first came to L.A., he stayed at my house.

I love thrift shopping. You can get ten things because everything costs, like, three dollars.

There isn't just one kind of person that can play a superhero.

I never, ever grew up as a young woman believing that my gender would stand in the way of doing anything I wanted.

I can only think of one wacky best friend who I thought was awesome: Rhys Ifans in 'Notting Hill.' He really nailed the wacky best friend.

I was a breakdancer as a kid. I was on one of the top break dancing teams in Australia.