Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father's side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him.

I've got two shirts still missing from the Bahamas. I'm sure they are part of a youth camping programme somewhere in Tanzania by now.

Greens are not expected to be anything but nice.

After that, whenever I drove past Mangakahia, I would empty my ashtray - and I was a heavy smoker in those days - on the road outside the hall.

Will the United States pull the rug on New Zealand? The answer is no. They might polish the lino a bit harder and hope that I execute a rather unseemly glide across it.

An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.

Today's Schools are not Tomorrows Schools. That's a fundamental misconception.

My back is so scar-tissued that you couldn't find a place to slip a knife.

They couldn't, in the National Party, run a bath and if either the deputy leader or the leader tried to, Sir Robert would run away with the plug.

Death is very, very terminal.

I think more than anything, that's when I decided politics was on.

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

Without mathematics, your world becomes foggy! For a clear vision, you need to be educated in the Temple of Mathematics!

No old road leads to new destinations! Change begins when one realizes that it is unwise to pour a new wine into an old wine skin. If you change your mind, you have to change your actions too!

Does one really have to fretAbout enlightenment?No matter what road I travel, I’m going home.

Look at pictures of me growing up. It wasn't always the way it is now. It was a bumpy road for me.

My dream writing room would be the Imperial Library in Vienna.

We don't run out of stories, because of the characters. But also every year, the NFL, like a crazy rich uncle we never see, just drops some stories off at our door.

You can't receive forgiveness unless you let God deal with your deceit.

To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.

There is no democracy without socialism, and no socialism without democracy.