All Quotes

"I can tell you this: Art can save your life. Art can absolutely save your life. I believe it from the bottom of my heart. But believe me when I tell you that entertainment will never be your salvation, alright. Art can save your life, but entertainment, entertainment by and large is escapism"

"I have a twin sister whose name is Anne, and as we live in the same city I’m constantly getting mistaken for her, and people are always asking ‘Are you Helen or Anne?’ And I’m so bored with the question, and I’m not listening, and I say ‘Anne’ without thinking. And then I realise and is it better to say, I’m sorry, I made a mistake! or to try to brazen it out, hoping no-one will realise?"

"I read a tremendous amount. But I also ride a mountain bike round the Wellington hills and on bike tours, and sail and tramp."

"I really like learning, and I liked learning when I was small. I guess I was one of those model pupils - except in one subject - see below."

"Can’t bring it down to one. Which part of childhood, anyway? When you were little and my mother used to read Beatrix Potter and the Winnie the Pooh books? Or when I was older and used to sneak read Enid Blyton (my mother didn’t approve of those!) No, better to say I read a vast amount, and on all sorts of subjects, and I loved historical fiction, and The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring (and the rest of the Trilogy), Drovers Road, the Narnia books, Kate Seredy books about Hungary before the First World War, Patricia Lynch books set in Ireland - all sorts."

"I started writing as a child, and then it got lost, and it was only when I began reading to my own children that I thought ‘I could do as well as this person’. Now one of the great rewards of writing is having characters constantly in your head, and seeing the world through their eyes and thinking about how they might respond to things that happen to them, and being aware of yourself in them."

"Writing is not about inspiration! In the main it’s about hard work and frustration and rewriting and rewriting. But there are moments. The best are when you’re writing and suddenly, words seem to flow from your fingertips and ideas happen that you haven’t had to work for and you don’t know where they came from."

"The worst is when you can’t think where to go in your writing, and an idea won’t get written."

"Write! (See the first sentence above - ‘best and worst thing about being a writer’)"

""Talking with jihadists and fighting terrorism is not contradictory,”"

"“I have a duty and a mission today to create all possible spaces and to do everything possible so that, by one means or another, some kind of appeasement can be achieved. It's time certain avenues were explored,""

"“We're going to try and do what the people want, like with the jirga in Afghanistan, to put it into practice, and we're trying to do it without being naive, we're not gullible. We'll continue with our work, with our duty, but we want to make sure that we will no longer be stubborn about things, stuck, or obtuse.""

"I personally called for a general mobilization of all Malian citizens, to make the response to Ebola a major national cause, with everyone, at all levels, committed: elected officials, traditional leaders, religious leaders, teachers, artists and the general public. Everyone must do their utmost to raise awareness and send prevention messages so that Ebola is soon no more than an unpleasant memory."

"We believe we need to strengthen our permanent crisis committee in Mali, which can be activated as soon as a crisis arises in one of our region’s countries. The Economic Community of West African States should also have a rapid response mechanism that includes 15 countries, so that the response from the region is a coordinated one. The same mechanism should exist in all regions of Africa and the whole world."

"Yes. It is essential that states continue to support each other and that warning mechanisms be established on an international level to enable a global response adapted to each setting, regardless of its nature."

"Phil Cooper was eleven years old when he began to understand that his father meant to bend him to his will."

"our little niece came tearing out to meet us."

"The story begins as the Pilgrim family, along with the rest of the Whanganui branch of The Children, move south to Nelson, to join with another branch. The reason for the move is unclear, but the teenagers assume it has something to do with needing to match-make, as many of the young females are approaching marriageable age – 16. Rebecca has lived her entire life within her family group, though she and the other children had to attend a ‘worldly school’ in Whanganui. It is a frightening prospect, then, when she is sent with her twin, Rachel, to sell produce at a farmers’ market on Saturdays in Nelson. This interaction with people who live their lives in freedom proves an eye-opener for both sisters."

"At no stage in the book does Beale let up on the tension, as we follow the sisters through impossible situations with regards to the Rule regarding every aspect of the Children of the Faith and how they manage themselves. The sisters must abase themselves each time they need to tell their Father something, for fear of earning hours of prayer. The tension builds, with death, bad marriage matches and new babies adding to it, until Rebecca begins to doubt, finally, the wisdom of her elders."

"cv_I_am_not_estherOne of the factors that contributes to Rebecca’s doubt is the not-insignificant fact that she, along with the rest of the family group, are meant to act as though their older sister and brother are dead, as well as her “trouble-causing” cousin, who she is continually required to stand up for. I am not Esther tells the story of the siblings and cousin who left the group – which to the family unit means they must be treated as ‘dead’. Rebecca is determined, in her own way, to remember that they existed, but not without guilt over this."

"While I won’t tell you what happens, I will say that Rebecca is a strong and admirable character. You feel that Beale really lets you into the mind of somebody who has grown up within a strict environment such as The Children of the Faith. Beale’s books have dealt with cults several times previously, but always from the outside looking in, so this is a refreshing point of view."

"The thing is, Neil, you are all of us’ is one of the first parts of the book I wrote, back in 2011. I had known Neil Roberts’s story for some time and it had occurred to me it would be interesting to write a long poem about the incident. One of the things that struck me early on in my research, from reading various anarchist/ libertarian communist web entries, was the sense of ownership amongst these radical left communities for the story. It was as though each person who had re-told the story, while not endorsing Neil’s act, could identify with the way he must have felt. In this poem I drew on my own experience within the Wellington anarchist scene – although not every detail is ‘true’, the characters in this poem do approximate real people, myself included."

"Within this poem the ghost of an accentual meter can be heard, and the metrical scheme, while loose, is something near the traditional 4, 3, 4, 3 ballad stanza. And it is off-rhymed, xaxa. Perhaps the ballad was lurking behind the scenes all along. It has been mentioned that Dear Neil Roberts is rhythmically close to prose. I think this is true (as it is for a wide range of contemporary free verse), but I also think that writing to a regular stanzaic shape can lead to some interesting effects. For instance, rhymes frequently occur at line-ends. And there are lines in the book that are straight iambic pentameter. It has to be remembered that poetry is a genre, and can be written in verse, prose, or any combination of the two. Writing Dear Neil Roberts as a poem allowed me to present, juxtapose and interpret information in a different manner, than if I had set out to write an extended essay or a work of New Zealand history."

"You have to be humble, if you’re humble, any good player will want to help you out. If you’re too cocky, no good player is going to want to help you to what you want to be."

"Sports in Africa is very difficult because we don’t have the facilities, so it can be very hard. It doesn’t matter how good you are; if you don’t have the facilities, you can’t make it to the top."

"They think it’s an easy sport compared to the other sports, but it’s not, If you tell somebody you play table tennis, they say, ‘Oh, I’m good! I’m good!’ Everybody’s good at playing table tennis."

"It’s like checking your pulse to see if you’ve still got it or not."

"The people are keen to see their standards of living improving. But because macroeconomic progress, including the lowering of inflation, does not really materialise in a day-to-day way for the people, there is a great deal of impatience. We have an African expression: ‘An empty stomach doesn’t have any ears’."

"It is also important to understand that when everything is a priority, it is perhaps difficult to focus on one aspect that you can demonstrate has improved, because you have to tackle everything at once. And where do you get the resources?"

"The democratic process was finalised recently with the legislative elections. So really the country has entered a new phase. It is going to be all about investment, attracting more bilateral and multilateral partners as well as the private sector. The focus of this investment will now be on youth employment and the fight against poverty. This is the priority moving forward."

"But for me to play in the Champions League is a very great honour. i always watch the Champions League."

"Since coming into office, the priority has been to re-establish macroeconomic stability, the normalisation of the country, and re-engaging with multilateral partners – other than the IMF and World Bank – who have not engaged with Guinea before. It has taken about two-and-a-half years to get to this level. Now we are ready to show the world that we have much to offer private investors."

"Let me correct you: this is not my third term, but my first term under the Fourth Republic, adopted by referendum. A referendum which, moreover, was not unprecedented in the history of Guinea: remember the one in November 2001 establishing a seven-year term renewable for life for President Lansana Conté, a liberty-curbing provision whose most ardent supporter at the time was a certain Cellou Dalein Diallo."

"Troublemakers sent young people armed with knives, and sometimes rifles, against the police."

"Today, under the new Constitution, the presidential term is six years, renewable only once. I have already explained why this Fourth Republic was necessary and why I decided to run in last October's presidential election. Since the two main opposition leaders were the very same ones who left Guinea in the disastrous state I found it in in 2010, it was inconceivable to me that it could fall into their hands again. As for democracy, it is a very long struggle, here as elsewhere. But it is progressing, and as you can see, the country is calm."

"I don't think it really hits you until it's out in the world and you see how much it means to people"

"It's not self-congratulatory, it's not announcing itself, it's just accepting it as a normal reflection of our reality"

"It's bigger than I am"

"Wait. She just locked herself in a room, took some Vyvanse, and made an album?’ That’s me any day of the week"

"It just felt so democratic in a way that was really exciting to me. It felt like something I could always be low-stakes doing in the background, and whether I did something with it or not, I enjoyed doing it, so it didn’t really matter"

"I was like, Alright, so I’m doing comedy at night, and during the day, I’ll make beats and stuff"

"Although he never visited America, he appeals particularly to Americans."

"Since the first cases of the disease in Sierra Leone in May, over 4,400 of our people have been infected, of which there are a little over 870 survivors. Most of the dead are women and over two-thirds of those infected belong to the most economically active age category of people between the ages of 15 and 50. Non-Ebola illnesses are adding to the death toll and increasing suffering, as the national healthcare delivery system is under further strains and being weakened."

"Our objective now is to break the chain of transmission of the disease and stop its spread. The way to do this is to ensure safe burial of those who have died of Ebola; remove the infected from communities and put them in holding and treatment centres; and hasten Ebola tests. We have started scoring successes in ensuring safe burial; we are also increasing the number of treatment centres and lab facilities to conduct tests for Ebola. But more needs to be done."

"With support from our partners, including the World Bank, the UN, the British and others, we have increased the availability of critical logistics and equipment, but more needs to be acquired. These include ambulances, vehicles and motorbikes, personal protective equipment, IV fluids, anti-bodies for superimposed infections, vitamins and food supplies. An additional 40 ambulances are needed to service the nationwide network of treatment centres and community Ebola care units; more motor bikes are needed for contact tracers and 20 to 50 4WD utility vehicles are needed for supervisors, surveillance officers and burial teams."

"The court for Sierra Leone is specifically for events that happen in the country. We believe that there is a justification for the court. Justification, because there is a need to send out signals – that nobody can shoot you away to get to power and expect to get away with it."

"If in the process, you allow people under your instructions to violate human rights, abuse people and disrupt the smooth running of society, you have to take responsibility. And I believe that what has happened has sent a signal to the people in the security forces, people that have plans of just access in power through the back-door, to think twice before they impact on such action. So it has had a useful purpose and I think, like I said it is going to put an end to the circle of impunity, of which people are doing things."

"Spedalieri was wrongly claimed by the Liberals as one of theirs, and if some of them accuse him of a want of loyalty when he wishes to conciliate democracy and a Divine sanction of the social order, it is because they do not understand the true nature of democracy or of the saying that all authority comes from God."

"Over the past year, I have learned an incredible amount, and the coaches and my teammates always make sure I’m still learning something new every single day."

"I’m not a person who looks that far ahead - I’m taking it day by day."