I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.

Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.

I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. Its always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact its so supple and sly.

Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.

To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt.

She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost

A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.

Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.

I often feel intellectually frustrated when I'm in a position where I'm not moving forward; when I'm not enquiring about something.

The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we've created as a culture as way to make things mean things.

Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

A church debt is the devil's salary.

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.

I'm not a romantic. In life I didn't have much experience with romance.

I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.

We can change South Africa on the rugby field

Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.

Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind.

How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!