“The truth is deafening, no matter how softly it is spoken.”

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you may be missing the colossal joke of the century.

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.

He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.

It is easy to sympathize at a distance,’ said an old gentleman with a beard. ‘I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.

If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

I haven’t spoken to my wife in years. I didn’t want to interrupt her.

The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone.

It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.