"When you're painting, nobody else knows what you're doing and you're the only one who understands it. You've got to have faith in what you're doing and in humanity."

"[A] painting presents its own battle, its own requirements. And a print is never a reproduction of a painting. It makes its own demands, it has its own life, its own thing going for it."

"More and more, we are being required to know what are the implications of living in a society that is increasingly diverse through the arrival of immigrants from all walks of life and very different parts of the planet. I would like to think that our work is a tangible example of what people can achieve when they work together."

"A consistent thread in my work is that it’s made in response to place, and what’s happening around me – physical and social environments provide the raw material, the inspiration, the starting point."

"Being an artist is submitting to the learning that comes from being a mother. It's all the better for the work in the end. It enriches your field of understanding of human nature, all the hards bits and the good bits, the whole thing...Ultimately, the way forward is to be grateful for the blessings that come from accepting those challenges."

"Art is a structure of symbols, and those people who do not comprehend that language will pass it by."

"It was too hard to be a feminist artist on your own; the criticism was too great to bear."

"I think I would have been more successful, but less interesting."

"They become a body not a person, then just an image not an image of a person."

"I felt very strongly about feminism and photography better expressed my political ideals."

"When you're painting you feel quite attune with everything... it's a great pleasure, quite addictive."

"I might refer to the female now, but she is always active, symbolic of female action and although painted in a sensual style, she is not up for sale, not offered to the viewer. This is one of the reasons I started using animals."

"I don't want to work unless there is some meaning that by painting I can communicate something personal and political. A painting is ambiguous, very sensuous and has to come from your core."

"Perhaps the Queen may listen to the petitions if they are presented by her Māori sisters, since she is a woman as well."

"If we are to discuss the importance of wāhine, we are also discussing the importance of whenua."

"I move this motion before the principle member and all honourable members so that a law may emerge from this parliament allowing women to vote and women to be accepted as members of the parliament."

"There are many intelligent women in New Zealand who marry men who do not know how to run their land."

"Then after work I'd be back at the Domain, or at one of the other parks. I'd be watched by Jim Bellwood, my coach. He'd supervise my jumping technique, or my throwing. This session would last a couple of hours."

"At lunchtime I'd train at the Domain. I ran in army boots for 30-45 minutes. The theory was that when I didn't have the boots on, I'd feel like I was flying. It certainly did feel good without them!"

"I used concrete blocks and sandbags for weights. I'd do an hour of weight training at home in the morning. My uncle, in whose house I was living in Auckland, had built a sort of gym in the spare room, so I'd spend an hour doing callisthenics before I went to work."

"I paint colour as a woman sees and hears..."

"I, as other painters do, live to paint and paint to live."

"I am still trying to express ... the vast variations & endless possibilities in paint."

"I have never lost my faith in my painting, my work, as a child or an adult, in sickness or health, success or failure, peace or war ..."

"I have been able to devote my energies to what I really am, a woman painter. It is my life."

"I've tried through the medium of paint to express ... how simple and wonderful living is ..."

"It's all there, the strangeness, colour, exhilaration."

"I live alone to work ... My friends are very few now, but more quality. Friends, family and works of art are the only reasons why I live."

"I haven't any desire for success or the limelight, and no further wish to explain myself. Neither do I wish to play, any more than I can help, a part in the world of petty tyranny, greed and murder, and war ... My pacifism and my paintings are now closely linked."

"[A] hui where wāhine Māori were able to discuss issues including the cessation of land sales, prohibition, and women's right to vote."

"I do hope that the women of New Zealand will realise...I will be their representative first."

"Well good morning everybody! Here I am back again, home again in New Zealand, which is the very easiest country in the world to live in and work in at the present time. I can assure you of that."

"Good morning everybody! Good morning everybody! I think the secret, if you want to be successful in anything, and you all do, and I think the only way is to mean it, to want to do it, to be sincere and not be mediocre. Don't - never be mediocre! Always want to do the very best and and certainly - that you couldn't care more!"

"...in a better sanitary condition than any in the North Island."

"I think women are quite as well able to legislate as men..."

"I am most anxious to make a change in the way business is carried on. There is in both borough councils and in Parliament too, a great deal too much talk...Men often get up and talk at these meetings just to waste time..."

"No woman, however degraded, but should have women to look after them."

"Most emphatically I am not a prohibitionist."

"I would like to warn honourable members, however, that women are never satisfied unless they have their own way. It happens in this case that the woman’s way is the right way."

"Let us prove ourselves as good as any man, and better than some."

"There is no reason why a woman should not receive the same pay for the same work as a man. To argue otherwise is to argue against justice."

"Poverty is not the fault of the poor. It is the fault of a system that allows idleness at the top and starvation at the bottom."

"Forget I am a member of the Labour Party and remember that I am a woman"

"From her 1923 article, "The first girl graduates": 'It is too soon yet...for a complete answer to be given to this question, but thousands of university women are proving by their lives that it has not unfitted them for home-making, the noblest sphere of women's work.'"

"The saddest thing when I left New Zealand was that Māori was not spoken. My father was never allowed to speak Māori...Now of course it's allowed, and it's absolutely wonderful that all these young people can speak their own language. I'm very sad that I can't speak it because we were blocked at the time...I will do in my own way. I'm not sure that it will go in my 77-year-old head but I certainly will try. I listen a lot to Māori Television to see how it is even, even the sort of greetings and how everyone speaks it."

"Regarding her retirement: "My main focus is to enjoy my life. I'm living in the most beautiful area by the sea.""

"I don't look at myself as being a dame. I just look at myself as my mother and father's adopted daughter that they gave everything to. The chances I've been given have been through my parents who gave and sacrificed everything for the career that I now have."

"...Australia like New Zealand is still very much 'a man's country"

"I find it hard to believe that I do not have to go on somewhere else... but there doesn't seem anywhere else to go, unless to the Antarctic. But one thing I do know: when I travel for a while after this I am going by train or road transport. I have had enough of the air for the time being."