Talk Talk - Series Three

I wouldn't say that was widespread, but it was certainly there. Also it's good in media terms to provide caricatures and to make cheap shots like that, and certainly I think it was a major breakthrough, our generation has had, of having so many women that were in roles that people hadn't seen them before. And I think that's what always happens when you have to confront something that's different. Now I just hope we don't have to wait another hundred odd years before we get a similar example of women holding positions of responsibility.

– Former Speaker of the House Margaret Wilson on the gendered criticism Helen Clark received as Prime Minister, in episode one

There was never really any other life for me although I did go to journalism school and work for Sunday News for two years as a reporter. So that was a good glimpse of seeing the other side of life...because you know doing these kind of things and doing interviews, that's all part of being a musician and part of what I do. Some musicians choose to be silent and they don't like it; but for me, because I worked on the other side, it's good to be able to know maybe how you're perceived.

– Jazz musician Nathan Haines on the benefits of getting some journalism training, late in episode one

One of the things I've learnt is that writing songs, writing books, painting pictures, doing dances, whatever your discipline is, your job, if you don't mind that word 'artist' . . .  is just to notice stuff: just keep your eyes open, and keep your tools sharp.

– sdffddfD Musician Don McGlashan on the core of being a creative, in episode two

...I think you have to be very inventive, very out there. You've got to keep your charity's name to the forefront, so that you are top of mind with the public. And you have to have a genuine need to go out and fundraise. I think if you can provide that, you do get the money.

– Philanthropist and charity worker Rosie Horton on the keys to successful fundraising, early in episode three

I love politics. I think it's a huge privilege to be able to think through an issue, put together a policy, describe some legislation or a programme, and put it in place. I mean, it is the greatest privilege human beings could have.

– Judith Tizard on what excites her about politics, early in episode four

That was probably the biggest learning curve, where I concentrated on winning rather than the people. And you think back on these learning things and you need to rejig occasionally because winning's very important, but you've got to make the guys are on the job, that you can relate, and those kind of things as well.

– Coach Graham Henry on learning to take a holistic approach to coaching, in episode seven

Kura kaupapa Māori, this Māori schooling type that we've created, is actually producing kids who are in two universes, which is really amazing for young people: the Māori world,  as well as the modern IT world. And these are the ones that I feel are going to move things along a bit, far beyond what I've tried to do.

– Academic and politician Pita Sharples on the success of the Kura kaupapa system, in episode five

I live emotionally. It's a big problem in many ways, but it's also not a bad thing either. And I really firmly believe that music is the language of the emotions, so to me that's what I've always done.

– Jazz pianist Mike Nock on music being an emotional outlet, in episode six

...the language does — it changes you I think. Because you think differently in Māori than you do in English.

– Author and academic Anne Salmond on learning te reo Māori, in episode fourteen

Oh yes, but the only thing I'd say about that is I've had several midlife crises starting when I was about 20 . . .  you go through these events in your life where you change, and I had that change and it's been a good one.

– Act Party leader Rodney Hide is asked if the physical transformation seen on Dancing with the Stars was caused by a midlife crisis, at the start of episode ten

It is the paradox of human existence isn't it? That the most evolved capacity we have, which is the capacities to use technologies . . . has changed the environment so rapidly that our biology is now rather mismatched for it, which is why many people get obsese, why many people have mental health problems, why we're going to struggle with the issues of climate change...

– Scientist Peter Gluckman, in episode nineteen

I hear cartoonists wistfully talking about the Muldoon era and how easy he was to cartoon, because obviously he used to lead by his chin a lot of the time, so it did make life very easy . . . some of the Prime Ministers were a little bit colourless by comparison, such as Rowling for example. I had great trouble drawing cartoons of Rowling because there never seemed to be anything really to grasp. 

– Cartoonist Peter Bromhead on cartoong is , early in episode 16

Partly because I think I might be making a difference, although perhaps I'm not, that's for other people to say, but also because there is also a certain sense of instant gratification from the job, and I mean that in this sense; when you ban some despicable image of child abuse for example, that classification lasts forever so for the rest of time anyone dealing in that picture, possessing that picture commits a criminal offence and our prosecution is liable for a term of imprisonment...so it's sort of like cleaning up the psychic environment in a way...

– Chief Censor Bill Hastings on why he has stayed in his job so long, in episode eight

From the age of 13 on, [I was] sent to boarding school up in Auckland here, and then to teachers' college. I've just written a piece . . . lamenting that, because my mother was an expert in the waiata, the traditions and customs of our people, and I'd never learned one song from her, I never learned to do a whaikōrero, a speech on the marae . . . here I was, being educated at teachers' college, at university to become like a brown Pākehā. And you could say I was educated, and yet I was not educated in the culture of my people.

– Ranginui Walker on being estranged from te ao Māori as a young man, in episode nine

Lots of reporters, even small provincial papers, had maybe 10 or 12 reporters of all ages, and though they drank too much, and they told too many stories and they smoked too much and they were loud, they were great places to be in . . . I went into the Herald newsroom a little while ago and it reminded me of a monastery really...little people huddled over keyboards, with no noise. Nobody shouting at anybody, nobody arguing about anything.

– Gordon McLauchlan compares the heyday of New Zealand journalism to today's newsrooms, in episode eleven

I've never thought of what I've done as a "career". I've always said a career is a six-letter word starting with "c" like "canker", "cancer", "career", you know. So I don't have much to do with that.

– Poet Sam Hunt is asked if he is making a comeback, in episode thirteen

You gotta stand side by side, and you gotta cop the same crap they cop, and when they see that, then you can get into a dialogue, you know. So it is 'insider, outsider' sort of stuff...

– Black Power member and social worker Denis O'Reilly on why he still aligns with his gang, in episode seventeen

My mother packed us fried rice for lunch. It got so bad that my elder sister Annie — I'm the youngest of four girls — would gather all the girls up at lunchtime, and we'd go behind the gymnasium in the dark, I can remember it was freezing in Christchurch, and eat our fried rice with our chopsticks 'cause the kids would say 'oh it's fried lice, what's that?'

– Barrister Mai Chen recalls the everyday racism she endured in 1970s Christchurch, early in episode twelve

Music is an endlessly fascinating thing, and I'm just as besotted with it now as I ever was...  

– Neil Finn, in episode twenty

...I was lucky because I caught on this writing about this whole problem of older women in showbusiness . . .  and my agent said to me 'no, no, no, you can't write about middle-aged women. Nobody's going to buy it'. And we all know middle-aged women are great readers; you know it's crazy . . . I did say to her 'what if I write a bonkbuster?'

– Novelist and actor Barbara Ewing on her first successful novel The Actresses, in episode fifteen