Zealand Quotes

We are a small, open economy, highly dependent on global flows. It is inevitably a demand that dramatically alters and that is reflected in what we feel here in New Zealand. So there is at its most basic level a limit to what we can do and that is true everywhere. ~ John Key

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

And that was what I was asking to happen and I was told that the indictment would be signed, but I was coming to the end of my one-year contract, I had to return to New Zealand for personal reasons. ~ Tony Greig

I've been round Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China in the last few months and the message that I've been taking is that New Zealand is building an up market dynamic into a connected economy. And that we are not the old-fashioned, ship mutton kind of product the people associate their export in work. ~ Helen Clark

And with alphabetical irony Nigeria follows New Zealand ~ David Coleman

Since I was growing up in New Zealand where there's a hole in the ozone layer above us, we get so much sun damage to our skin, and the thing we can do to look after ourselves is use sunscreen during the day, but making sure your skin is well hydrated while you sleep. ~ Rose McIver

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

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. ~ Gin Wigmore

I want to leave New Zealand in better shape than I found it. I know the job of prime minister is not forever and I'm going to do the best I can every day to make that difference. ~ John Key

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

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. ~ David Lange

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

I come from a country that lives and breathes rugby, and I didn't think there would be anywhere else in the world that could be the same. But New Zealand takes it to another dimension. It's extraordinary how much passion Kiwis have for the game. ~ Luke Evans

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

An innocent youth wrote recently that he is convinced I am the greatest writer in the world (from New Zealand). A touching letter – so simple & unaffected. Another young man wrote, only yesterday, that I am to him what Hardy must have been to me. Such tributes are worth having, aren't they, even if I don't deserve them. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Maoris now own over half the commercial fishing industry in New Zealand. ~ Malcolm Fraser

When we shot 'The Lord of the Rings,' we had special permission to film in wild areas of New Zealand that could be accessed only by helicopter. They would drop us off and we would work all day, and they'd pick us up and take us out again. ~ Viggo Mortensen

I love having the laid-back, easy-going, family-priority nature of New Zealand, but I'm certainly enjoying the States in terms of the career opportunities and the enthusiasm I get to find work. ~ Rose McIver

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent - it doesn't work. ~ Sam Neill

At some point, when you read about this factual information that comes out in The New Zealand Herald and it's barely mentioned in The New York Times, then I think you've got to question where this is being manipulated, and where the filters are. ~ Eddie Vedder

What are we doing tonight, Spock?' Luca grinned at Jacob.
'Apparently, he's going to New Zealand,' Ellen replied with heavy sarcasm.
'New Zealand?'
'It's code for Outer Space. ~ Sharon Sant

I lived in England for a long time, and even the English didn't think me as one of theirs. In America I'm not really accepted. In New Zealand now, I don't think they even think of me as a New Zealander. ~ Andrew Niccol

I've got a New Zealand film coming out here called Out of the Blue. It's a very heavy story, and it's the first time I've played a character who is alive. ~ Karl Urban

'Slow West' is a film that I did with Michael Fassbender in New Zealand and Scotland. The director was John McLean. It's a film set in the 1800s. I play a young Scottish boy brought up in the royal family. I fall in love with someone who works on our land. ~ Kodi Smit-McPhee

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

I think it took us all by surprise. I mean, I knew that people in New Zealand would like [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but no one really anticipated how much they would embrace it as it is. And it's playing widely in Australia now; they're running it as well. It's going to be interesting to see how it does it in the States, but I think if Sundance was any indication, I imagine it could do well. ~ Sam Neill

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

Many European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, Israel, and New Zealand, have adopted legislation that creates a 'public lending right', where the government recognises that enabling hundreds of people to read a single copy of a book provides a public good, but that doing so is likely to reduce sales of the book. ~ Peter Singer

I think the main message is that world rugby needs New Zealand and New Zealand needs world rugby. ~ Mike Miller

People in New Zealand go out of their way to not be impressed by things. ~ Melanie Lynskey

Fiordland, a vast tract of mountainous terrain that occupies the south-west corner of South Island, New Zealand, is one of the most astounding pieces of land anywhere on God's earth, and one's first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause. ~ Douglas Adams

They thought of home, naturally, but there was no burning desire to be in civilization for its own sake. Worsley recorded: "Waking on a fine morning I feel a great longing for the smell of dewy wet grass and flowers of a Spring morning in New Zealand or England. One has very few other longings for civilization - good bread and butter, Munich beer, Coromandel rock oysters, apple pie and Devonshire cream are pleasant reminiscences rather than longings. ~ Alfred Lansing

People can't anticipate how much they'll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense 'periscope liberty'- a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. 'A baby!' he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran. ~ Mary Roach

New Zealand is not used to wealth. In America wealth is kind of a thing of pride. Here it's the opposite. The more you've got, the bigger the target you are. ~ Peter Jackson

I remember thinking when I was younger - we used to take holidays to Spain and France, and I just thought I was never going to get further than Spain or France. I really didn't when I was younger. And then I started auditioning for 'Narnia,' and the first thing when I got the part was go straight to New Zealand, halfway around the world. ~ William Moseley

I want to see a thousand tiny places, smell their flowers, and taste the sauces made by their people. I want to feel the difference between the textures of grit in Sri Lanka and Morocco. I want to meet the woman who bakes the best bread i n the smallest town in New Zealand. I want to find the best vantage point to see Bosnia from Croatia. What do the Grand Marnier crepes taste like in Rouen? In Paris? There are untold numbers of tiny places and extraordinary people who occupy them. We will perhaps see a hundred of both. ~ Tsh Oxenreider

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

There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand. ~ Henry Rollins

'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores. ~ Romesh Gunesekera

People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions? ~ Howard Zinn

Australia and New Zealand are now threatened by the might of the Imperial Japanese forces, and both of them should know that any resistance is futile. ~ Hideki Tojo

[Herbert Spencer] was ready in those days to give everything a trial; he even thought of migrating to New Zealand, forgetting that a young country has no use for philosophers. It was characteristic of him that he made parallel lists of reasons for and against the move, giving each reason a numerical value. The sums being 110 points for remaining in England and 301 for going, he remained. ~ Will Durant

I think Justin Bieber played a couple of songs up the block from it - and they said that some-one in his camp came and got him a burger. We had been talking about him a lot. Especially actually, last time we came to Australia, C.T. was on a real big Justin Bieber kick. I just thought it was really interesting to finally cross paths with him in New Zealand. And like really - the TV, everyone's just talking about it on the radio - it's a big deal that he was here. I think he just left. ~ Chris Baio

...and in Wellington women in the bakery trade were able "to perform certain skilled operations for which they are particularly suited, at rate equivalent to two thirds the journeyman's rate". ~ Barbara Brookes

How far they came to perish here, these soldiers and these machines! What bizarre train of events brought youngsters from the Rhineland and Prussia, from the Scottish Highlands and London, from Australia and New Zealand, to butt at each other to the death with flame-spitting machinery in faraway Africa, in a setting as dry and lonesome as the moon?

But that is the hallmark of this war. No other war has ever been like it. This war rings the world.... Men fight as far from home as they can be transported, with courage and endurance that makes one proud of the human race, in horrible contrivances that make one ashamed of the human race. ~ Herman Wouk

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

If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is. ~ Mark Twain

We have now reached the point where you can wander down Queen Street in Auckland and wonder if you are still in New Zealand or some other country. ~ Winston Peters

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications. ~ Margaret Mahy

Poetry for me is a result of lyrical meditation, pre-verbal in origin, and much of the craft has to do with finding a contemporary diction that embodies, at times subverts but never betrays that pre-verbal lyrical source: the presence of song before it is sung. ~ John Allison

But for me to start the journey of writing a book about my life, the first place I had to re visit was my past. A book written from the deepest part of my heart as so many tears at times did fall upon the keyboard as I typed away. ~ Christian S. Simpson

'Heavenly Creatures' was really the idea of Fran Walsh. It was a very famous New Zealand murder case, but not one that people knew much about. ~ Peter Jackson

There is a lot of 'Halo' movie material no one has ever seen in New Zealand. ~ Peter Jackson

I'm still always a country girl from New Zealand. ~ Ladyhawke

New Zealand looks like the future to me ~ Paula Scher

Just because it's jewellery it doesn't mean we have to clam up and be well-behaved. ~ Lisa Walker

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

Fresh start. Day two, socks around my ankles, way down, two Maori boys approached me before I could get to my desk. Probelm solved. That day and in the many enjoyable ones that followed, my classmates asked me dozen of questions about America, while detailing essential subjects for a New Zealand boy in 1976, including lollies, meat pies and chips, cricket and rugby, ABBA and Tintin comic books, and why their relatives with tattoos on their face did that funy dance while sticking out their tounges. ~ Franz Wisner

My dad always told me that the principal reason he chose New Zealand to emigrate to after World War II was the high regard his father had for the Kiwis he encountered at Gallipoli. ~ Peter Jackson

I'm an officer in her Majesty's Royal New Zealand Navy. I'm a public relations officer in the Royal New Zealand Navy. Sounds good, doesn't it? ~ Mark Hadlow

I've never been to New Zealand, but I can imagine it's beautiful. I don't know much about New Zealand ... but I do know that I did watch 'Lord Of The Rings' so it looks really pretty. ~ Jack Barakat

In Debt, the anthropologist David Graeber tells the story of Tei Reinga, a Maori villager and "notorious glutton" who used to wander up and down the New Zealand coast, badgering the local fishermen by asking for the best portions of their catch. Since it's impolite in Maori culture (as in many cultures) to refuse a direct request for food, the fishermen would oblige - but with ever-increasing reluctance. And so as Reinga continued to ask for food, their resentment grew until "one day, people decided enough was enough and killed him."
This story is extreme, to say the least, but it illustrates how norm-following and norm-enforcement can be a very high-stakes game. Reinga flouted an important norm (against freeloading) and eventually paid dearly for it. But just as tellingly, the fishermen who put him to death felt so duty-bound by a different norm (the norm of food-sharing) that they followed it even to the point of building up murderous resentment. "Couldn't you just have said no to Reinga's requests?!" we want to shout at the villagers. ~ Kevin Simler

An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century. ~ Eleanor Catton

New Zealand is not a small country but a large village. ~ Peter Jackson

I went to New Zealand this year, and, whew man, I know a lot of people want to go there. But let me just tell you, it's 22 hours by plane. So, if you have the opportunity, don't. ~ Lewis Black

On many occasions New Zealand has spoken about the need to ensure that women's concerns are fully integrated into all aspects of the United Nations' activities and structures, not marginalised in one part of the Secretariat. ~ Jenny Shipley

New Zealand has the cheapest government money can buy. ~ Grant McLachlan

As a kid in New Zealand, you play cricket in summer and rugby in winter. I played cricket and hockey. Not rugby. I wasn't brawny enough for it. Or silly enough, perhaps. ~ Glenn Turner

The big change was reggae and hip-hop, which came along after Split Enz had started. When Bob Marley first visited New Zealand, he lit a fuse that is still burning very brightly. The Maori people particularly honor reggae music in a very big way. So there is a strong reggae scene and a strong hip-hop scene, especially among Samoans. There's still plenty of quirky stuff around. No one expects to make much money here, so it definitely does encourage an underground sense. ~ Tim Finn

I was trying to get into the business from a young age, but I don't think I really realized how much I loved it until I booked my first movie and found myself in New Zealand for six months filming Bridge to Terabithia. ~ Bailee Madison

Acid strength is measured by the pH scale, with lower numbers being stronger, and in 2005 a chemist from New Zealand invented a boron-based acid called a carborane, with a pH of -18 ~ Sam Kean

Americans ... publish more books than any other country, but the per capita figure is surprisingly low. Of the English-speaking nations, the United States comes in fifth, behind the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The United Kingdom publishes 2,336 books per person, the United States 545. ~ Lewis Buzbee

To indicate how large a part of the Earth is covered by the oceans, we might call attention to the fact that a whole hemisphere, with its center near New Zealand, would have only one-tenth of its area as dry land! And the average depth of the seas is over two miles. ~ Paul J. H. Schoemaker

In New Zealand, we have a one-party disclosure system, where if one of you knows you're being recorded, it's completely fine. It doesn't matter if the other person doesn't know. Look, I'm not breaking new ground by recording people who don't want to be recorded. ~ David Farrier

I think that generally New Zealand is respected for the positions it takes because it thinks them through. ~ Helen Clark

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

But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were: hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning, and find himself in Port Nelson, in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him. ~ Anne Bronte

With his fingers, he followed the shape of her chin, her jaw, and learned her features, committing them to memory. Her face was small, her bones fragile. Exquisite. ~ Sofia Grey

There are parts of New Zealand that I absolutely fell in love with that I will miss going back to, but I kind of think that is the part that can continue and will continue on. I don't imagine I'll stop going back to New Zealand, because I feel part of the fabric there, really. ~ Andy Serkis

One place that I looked at a lot from space and which looks alluring is New Zealand, especially the North Island. It's a big broad valley with a river flowing through it, and you can see the wine-making dryness of the land. ~ Chris Hadfield

If you can beat New Zealand, then you're probably going to win the World Cup. ~ Brian O'Driscoll

I feel very lucky to be able to make movies in New Zealand, and I will always be grateful for the support I have received from so many New Zealanders. ~ Peter Jackson

The pa system has broken down. Society has broken down. ~ Theresa Sjoquist

Even Quinn joined in and took his turn picking obscure items, like a feather cloak that originated in far-off New Zealand. ~ Alice Wallis-Eton

As an artist I recognise that I have been brought up Pākehā, but am intrigued about addressing this mixing of culture in my life and society as a whole. I interpret this in different ways in my work, and have no answers. ~ Lisa Walker

I've been to New Zealand, like, 25 or 30 times. ~ Toby Emmerich

We stick to the magical places in the world," Asahi clarified.

"Places like the MBRC, the Redwood forest of California, the less populated parts of New Zealand and Japan, Disney World, and Atlantis," Madeline listed, ticking the places off on her fingers.

"Wait, Disney World?" I interrupted.

"The most magical place on Earth. ~ K.M. Shea

'Bad Taste' was - it was, in many respects, my sort of, my, I guess, my single-minded desire to want to break into the film industry when New Zealand didn't really have a film industry to break into. ~ Peter Jackson

New Zealand has the best government money can buy. ~ Grant McLachlan

The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to
fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb
beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming,
polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches,
talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's
car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs.
The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a
peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role
model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you
got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have
guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the
worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances
here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once
things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in
Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has
been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North
Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand ha ~ Neal Stephenson

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

I would have thought there's no greater country to watch rugby than New Zealand. ~ Jamie Bamber

...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

New Zealand needs to balance its environmental responsibilities with its economic opportunities, because the risk is that if you don't do that - and you want to lead the world - then you might end up getting unintended consequences. ~ John Key

We do not wish to have nuclear weapons on New Zealand soil or in our harbors. We do not ask, we do not expect, the United States to come to New Zealand's assistance with nuclear weapons or to present American nuclear capability as a deterrent to an attacker. ~ David Lange

In Antartica, The Wright and half a dozen other valleys in the Central Transantarctic Mountains are collectively referred to as the dry valleys. It has not rained here in two million years. No animal abides, no plant grows. A persistent, sometimes ferocious wind has stripped the country to stone and gravel, to streamers of sand. The huge valleys stand stark as empty fjords. You look in vain for any conventional sign of human history- the vestige of a protective wall, a bit of charcoal, a discarded arrowhead.

Nothing. There is no history, until you bore into the layers of rock or until the balls of your fingertips run the rim of a partially exposed fossil. At the height of the austral summer, in December, you smell nothing but the sunbeaten stone. In a silence dense as water, your eye picks up no movement but the sloughing of sand, seeking its angle of repose.

On the flight in from New Zealand it had occurred to me, from what I had read and heard, that Antarctica retained Earth's primitive link, however tenuous, with space, with the void that stretched out to Jupiter and Uranus. At the seabird rookeries of the Canadian Arctic or on the grasslands of the Serengeti, you can feel the vitality of the original creation; in the dry valleys you sense sharply what came before. The Archeozoic is like fresh spoor here. ~ Barry Lopez

Kezia could've guessed from the soapy scent wafting over her shoulder. Soap and something else. The XY factor that made some men smell so good you just wanted to lick the nearest inch of available skin. ~ Tracey Alvarez

I've done an awful lot of skiing all over Europe: I've done Italy, Austria, France. I skied loads in New Zealand - I did pretty much every ski slope I could find. ~ Richard C. Armitage

I was in New Zealand and met this girl. Her sister dared me to bungee jump, so I did! It was a spur-of-the-moment decision - I wanted to impress the girl, and it worked! We were in a relationship after that. ~ Theo James

Fortunately New Zealand doesn't have land borders so we are able to be somewhat more rigorous on who gets in and out of our country than perhaps some people. ~ Helen Clark