I'm very interested in how idealistic young people can get caught up in all sorts of systems of extreme belief, you know, whether it's cults or whether it's suicide bombers.

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.

The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.

I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.

Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.

If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.

I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.

When I tell her what I’m thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each ideas jumping into the other’s head, like coulouring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.

Family life was and always will be the foundation of any civilization. Destroy the family and you destroy the country.

Kate, I can't live my life in the shadow of your fears.

In this business, until you're known as a monster, you're not a star

My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.

Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing it, and the great effort of those who created and recorded the work is damaged.

Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today, and that's why everything is so screwy.

Electronic man has no physical body.

Judgment and weariness are foes to service and generosity.

The great challenge facing us today is to learn once again how to talk to one another, not simply how to generate and consume information.

It's up to each of us to get very still and say, 'This is who I am.' No one else defines your life. Only you do.