New Zealand Arts History Quotes

When will the human race choose wisely? All know it is just as eventful, if not more so, when the young seek adventure, purpose, and dreams; instead of blaming everyone but themselves if they choose otherwise ~ Theresa Sjoquist

People were nicer to me when I was in the arts. I experienced extreme racism in small-town New Zealand. Racism which really went away when I got into the arts. ~ Cliff Curtis

No-one has the right to terminate a person's life with a gun, a knife, or a makutu (spell). ~ Theresa Sjoquist

Know your load. That's rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I'm not going to be the schmuck who shows up in Orlando two
birds short of a dinner party ... I know I'm pulling out of Houston with exactly forty-two Gentoo penguins, seventeen Jamaican land iguanas, four tuataras from New Zealand, and a pair of rare, civet-like mammals called linsangs. No more, no less. ~ Jacob M. Appel

The endangered Kiwi is aptly New Zealand's icon. There is so much promise to lay a large egg but without the ability to get it off the ground. ~ Grant McLachlan

I've always had the dream of going to New Zealand and meeting a lovely New Zealander in a bar. ~ Jack Barakat

I know as far as things like the Thunderbirds, there's a New Zealand connection. X-Files, my connection there ... I mean, it could be zeitgeist. I mean, I'm into the paranormal. I have a podcast about cryptozoology. So it's out there that I'm into weird stuff. ~ Rhys Darby

The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for giant squid, I cannot have a baby. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The fact is Qatar, Etihad, Emirates, Singapore, Garuda, all of the three Chinese airlines, Air New Zealand - the fact is that international aviation relies very much upon agreements between nation-states, and it is not an area in which you have free market operations. ~ Anthony Albanese

Our people once were warriors. But unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit. If my spirit can survive living with you for eighteen years, then I can survive anything. ~ Alan Duff

I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast. ~ Queen Elizabeth II

Obviously, it was a big life change for me and quite a shock to suddenly have these songs I'd written in my bedroom as a far-too-intense teenager all over the airwaves and see my face on buses, especially in a small country like New Zealand, but at the same time it was such a thrill and an honour knowing that my music was reaching people. ~ Brooke Fraser

I was born in New Zealand, so I have a lot of family there. ~ Grant Bowler

New Zealand totally rejects Japan's proposals to double the number of whales slaughtered in the Southern Ocean ~ Chris Carter

I think it would be impossible not to be an Internet kid, coming from New Zealand, because culturally it's a little barren. ~ Lorde

I can't choose one favorite place because all destinations have something different to offer. My favorite city to explore is Paris; I love the culture of Morocco and the waterfalls in St. Lucia. I just can't choose one. I would like to go back to New Zealand to see more of what it has to offer. ~ Martha Hunt

History is driven, over the long haul, by culture - by what men and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies deem to be true and good, and by the expressions they give to those convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on. ~ George Weigel

Dear Oscar

I don't know how to say this any other way but, you see, I need to explain something. I can't stop thinking about that night when you rescued Barney with you tart – and how good and kind I realise you've always been. It wasn't until this morning when you sent me an apple tart of my own that I finally knew what it is that I have to tell you.
The timing is pretty terrible, but, you see, the reason I haven't wanted to go away is because I've wanted to stay here, and the reason I've wanted to stay here is because of you.
I've nothing against New Zealand or anything but because of how I feel, specifically about you, the whole world looks different.
I don't know whether it's because of everything has got darker or lighter. I guess that depends on how you feel about me which is, I hope, the same.
So anyways, look, you've convinced me that I should, as you say 'embrace the adventure' so that is what I have decided to do. It was the taste of you apple tart that finally made up my mind to give this my all. But I need to know you'll be here when I come back.
I love you Oscar Dunleavy.
I've been falling in love with you since that day we first met.
I need to have some idea about whether you feel the same way about me. Send me a sign.
Anything will do.
Love,
Meg ~ Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

I'm from Canada, and New Zealand feels like you took all the best bits of Canada and squished them onto a tiny island like Hawaii. I was absolutely blown away by the beauty of the South Island. ~ Evangeline Lilly

I can't believe I'm in New Zealand, I can't wait to play. It's just so beautiful out here and so awesome. ~ The Rocket Summer

If popular mythology is to be believed, the discoverer of New Zealand was a Polynesian voyager named Kupe. Oddly, this myth was Pakeha in origin rather than Maori. Maori came to embrace it solely as a result of its widespread publication and dissemination in New Zealand primary schools between the 1910s and the 1970s. ~ Michael King

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. ~ John Adams

In New Zealand I think we often take ourselves too seriously, and being able to laugh at yourself is necessary in life without being too precious. ~ Murray Mexted

...an early missionary in New Zealand heard a Maori warrior taunting the preserved head of an enemy chief in the following fashion:

You wanted to run away, did you? but my meri (war club] overtook you: and after you were cooked, you made food for my mouth. And where is your father? he is cooked: and where is your brother? he is eaten:-and where is your wife? there she sits, a wife for me:-and where are your children? there they are, with loads on their backs, carrying food, as my slaves.' In Maori warfare, decapitation marked the beginning, not the end, of a vanquished warrior's humiliation. ~ Lawrence Keeley

The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again ... just singing one song, the national anthem. ~ Hugh Jackman

Coming from New Zealand, all the music I listen to is not made by New Zealanders. People never come to New Zealand to play a show because it's in the middle of nowhere. ~ Lorde

I love working in New Zealand. It's just the most beautiful country I've ever been to. ~ Grant Bowler

Living in New Zealand, it's like a different world - it is a different world. It's very, very cool. ~ Luke Evans

I grew up on the South Island of New Zealand, in a city chosen and beloved by my parents for its proximity to the mountains - Christchurch is two hours distant from the worn saddle of Arthur's Pass, the mountain village that was and is my father's spiritual touchstone, his chapel and cathedral in the wild. ~ Eleanor Catton

The Government has to stop borrowing as much money; if we don't, quite frankly New Zealand will be downgraded and interest rates will go up for all New Zealanders. ~ John Key

Think about it: you've already related it down to something that somebody else can understand. If art relates to something - it's like Picasso, it's like Mondrian - it's not. Art's supposed to be what it is. Using a reference of art history might help for some kind of sales, but it doesn't really help anybody. Art is what it is; it cannot be footnoted, until it enters the world. Then it has a history. Then the footnotes are the history, not the explanation. ~ Lawrence Weiner

The people of New Zealand are generally terribly nice. Everybody we had met so far had been terribly nice to us. Terribly nice and eager to please. I realised now that all this relentless niceness and geniality to which we had been subjected had got to me rather badly. New Zealand niceness is not merely disarming, it's decapitating as well, and I had come to feel that if Just one more person was pleasant and genial at me I'd hit him. ~ Douglas Adams

Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves. ~ Charles Darwin

The one thing that has changed dramatically when you talk to the people of New Zealand and people from Ireland? They feel a darned-sight better about themselves because they made the decision to do what they've done, and I can say to you, we would feel a bloody darned sight better about ourselves once we get an opportunity to put this [vote on same-sex marriage] out there. ~ Tony Abbott

Everything in Australia is trying to kill you, haven't you heard? Half of the ten deadliest snakes in the world live in Queensland. And then there are the poisonous spiders and the jellyfish. Not to mention the crocs and the great white sharks. Another point in favor of New Zealand. Very benign place, En Zed. ~ Rosalind James

Anyone desperate enough for suicide ... should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try. ~ Richard Bach

There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts ... it is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text. ~ David Coleman

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. ~ David Lange

In 2013, science writer Natalie Angier gave the centrality of female friendship a zoological boost, pointing out that, In animals as diverse as African elephants and barnyard mice, blue monkeys of Kenya and feral horses of New Zealand, affiliative, long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships between females turns out to be the basic unit of social life. ~ Rebecca Traister

My wife and I use a lot of garlic and rosemary with roast lamb. It has to be New Zealand lamb. The domestic variety is too gamy, in my experience. ~ Alfred Molina

Married when bees o'er
May blossoms flit,
Strangers around your
board will sit. ~ New Zealand Proverb

Far away Tongariro! Green - white thundering Athabasca river of New Zealand! I vowed I would come again down across the Pacific to fish in the swift cold waters of this most beautiful and famous of trout streams. It is something to have striven. It is much to have kept your word. ~ Zane Grey

Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake. ~ Julian Barnes

I've got some real diehards down in New Zealand; I look after them and make sure they always get tickets. ~ Gin Wigmore

I went to a state school in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then straight on to the University of Canterbury. But I worked part-time all the way through high school: first with a paper round, then at a fast-food outlet, a video store and a hardware store. ~ Eleanor Catton