“The whole point of art, aside from the aesthetic pleasure it yields, is that it provides a bridge to the past; that seductive land where we all find certainty and consolation. Nothing quite spans this gulf with such immediacy as the art of popular song.”

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.

New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human.

I think a lot of people think that we [comedians] are nerveless people in the theatre, that we don’t feel that kind of terror which traditionally anyone who has to do any public speaking feels. It’s worse for actors, because our livelihood depends on it.

I like people who are slightly unhygienic. A little grubbiness isn’t so bad. BO chic it should be called.

I’m an immensely shy and vulnerable woman. My husband has never seen me naked. Nor has he expressed the least desire to do so.

Everyone had a Japanese maple, although after Pearl Harbor most of these were patriotically poisoned, ringbarked and extirpated.

Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. She’s now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia

Friendship is tested in the thick years of success rather than in the thin years of struggle.

I was born with a priceless gift, the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.

Sport is a loathsome and dangerous pursuit.

The past is so reliable, so delightful and the best place to live.

I have outlived most of my more athletic contemporaries who jogged, golfed and squashed themselves into coronary occlusion.

I love Australia – I think.

Australia is an outdoor country. People only go inside to use the toilet. And that’s only a recent development.

My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more.

The technology gets cheaper and cheaper, and at some point it has to be cheaper than all these trucks and all this gas, to just say, let’s give away a Kindle to everyone.

Sometimes, the ocean floor is only a stop on the journey. And it is when you are at this lowest point, that you are faced with a choice. You can stay there at the bottom, until you drown. Or you can gather pearls and rise back up—stronger from the swim, and richer from the jewels.

And it’s taken me the best part of 54 years to reach that point where I’m like, “I’m very lucky, I’m lucky, I’m blessed” – all of those things. I wish I could impart that to other people but I think when you’re young, you just don’t listen.

I’m a huge believer in learning anything from multiple points of view.

You have to come back strong. But to win the last point in a grand slam tournament, that’s the most beautiful and most satisfying feeling you can get as a tennis player. It’s worth it.

When we reach the point where the women athletes are getting their pick of dates just as easily as the men athletes, then we’ve really and truly arrived. Parity at last!

There were a lot of days when I thought maybe this isn’t what I should be doing. There’ve been a lot of days where you get to the point where you’re like.

It is difficult to generalize about Islam. To begin with, the word itself is commonly used with two related but distinct meanings, as the equivalents both of Christianity, and Christendom.