Offerings to the God of Speed

...Offerings to the God of Speed was a couple of years in the making — a labour of love made on what Donaldson describes as a shoestring budget.

– Writer Maree Field in The Southland Times, 20 November 2009

You can live more in five minutes on a motorcycle in some of these events I've been in, than some people do in a lifetime.

– Burt Munro on his lifelong obsession

[Roger Donaldson] was drawn to Munro’s philosophy of living life to the extreme. Donaldson now lives in the US and said Americans within the small speed fraternity were impressed by this man who had come so far on a shoestring budget to chase his dream.

– Southland Times writer Louisa Steyl, 8 February 2021

He's always of course been crazy on motorbikes and I well remember our mother saying that she really felt that Burt wanted to die with his boots on.

– Burt Munro's younger brother tells a family anecdote

...anybody can buy a fast bike today and go fast. Riding it is only one hundredth of the actual experience needed ... although it can be pretty hairy at times, too, especially speed trials.

– Burt Munro

I work nine months and nine days every day except three hours off Christmas Day. And I had 27 test runs this year — 24 on the beach and three on the road, illegally...

– Burt Munro describes his working year

I'm the oldest guy in the world to run in record attempts in speed trials, and I'm the oldest in the world to break records. I broke two New Zealand national beach records out here about 18 months ago.

– Burt Munro on his remarkable track record with his Indian Scout bike

I reckon if I could be like him when I'm his age, I'd be quite content.

– A younger male fan on Burt Munro

Well who doesn't? Everybody breaks the speed limit...don't they?

– Burt Munro's reply to director Roger Donaldson's question "why do you like going fast?"

[Burt Munro] poured all his money into getting the Scout to the United States — at a time when New Zealand was pretty isolated ... and ended up setting multiple speed records — one of which he still holds to this day — at the ripe old age of 63.

– Writer Louisa Steyl, in an article on Invercargill's annual motorcycling event the Burt Munro Challenge, The Southland Times, 8 February 2021

The character that Burt was — he seemed to be just a great sort of icon of the spirit of the New Zealand can-do, number eight fencing wire sort of mentality ... He took pride in that someone from so far away from what was the centre of high-speed record-breaking, could do something and do it so well, and be competitive and yet be doing it in such a backyard way.

– Roger Donaldson on Burt Munro, The Southland Times, 20 November 2009