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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.

I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well.

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

I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea.

I've had a quiet fascination with New Zealand for most of my life.

I might be one of the most flamboyant characters New Zealand has ever seen, but my intentions are good, and I would like to see New Zealand flourish.

There's a very go-to kind of attitude in New Zealand that stems from that psyche of being quite isolated and not being able to rely on the rest of the world's infrastructure.

I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom.

New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.

The books that really made an impact on me were not set in New Zealand. Some were New Zealand novels, but the New Zealandness of them was not what carried me or excited me.