The Book Show - Series Two

I'm always happy because your definition of 'young" is elastic...

– Roving reporter Finlay Macdonald on Bub Bridger's love of "young" men, in episode three

The way Doyle paints it is that the brotherhood, the Sinn Féin became the home for all these poor — you know, the woebegotten souls who were like trying to find their way.

– Auckland author Paul Shannon on his favourite Roddy Doyle novel, A Star Called Henry, late in episode two

I never decided that I would; I was just never able to stop.

– Neil Cross on becoming a writer, in episode two

It's not a world that I know but I came to know something about it though the book which was good, but I see...when I look at literature, when I look at books I look at the structure of them and ... I saw a fairy tale actually, when I think about it you know the traditional princess who becomes a maid who rises to become a queen and all these mad people inbetween on that journey...

– Panel member Kath Ahukata Brown on Paula Morris's New York-based novel Trendy But Casual, episode three (02.40)

A great deal of my fiction deals with extreme violence erupting in normal lives.

– British writer Neil Cross, in episode two

It's typically Jamesian because in a way its an unambiguous story: you know exactly what's going on, but it creates these ambiguities of feeling in you, because you want her protected, yet you can't like the father who's protecting her...

– Author CK Stead on Catherine Sloper, a character in Henry James novel Washington Square, late in episode three

Some phrases you have to say out loud. it's like someone has poured warm milk into your skull, you know? It's just beautiful — I loved it.

– Writer Kath Akuhata-Brown on the prose of Michael Ondaatje's novel Divisadero, early in episode six

...I wouldn't really be interested in writing a biography about someone who was obvious and straightforward. It's the enigma of a particular personality, I think, that drives your interest as a biographer. With someone like [John] Mulgan, someone like [Ralph] Hotere, there is a core there which is truly enigmatic, and which obviously fuels the work.

– Writer Vincent O'Sullivan on what makes a compelling biography subject, in episode four

...of course it wasn't called Lord of the Flies to begin with; it was called something awful like A Cry of Children. And it took 22 goes to get the manuscript actually on the desk at Faber and Faber for someone to accept it. All these stories come out . . . the professional book reader who looked at Lord of the Flies and said 'rubbish, dull, pointless'.

– Author Stacy Gregg discusses literary gossip from Rick Gekoswi's book Tolkien's Gown & Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books, in episode seven

...what I liked about it is . . . you never know if you're nuts, you know? And he had no idea, until they started finding the bodies...

– Marcus Lush gets a laugh while discussing Sebastian Faulks' novel Engleby

It was just extraordinary from the moment I started reading it. It doesn't have any chapters, and you just don't want it to stop. It's like that feeling of being a child again when you're reading a book and you honestly stay up all night reading it.

– Writer/performer Jo Randerson praises The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, in episode eight

I love the title, I loved it. in the same way that the stories take on extra meaning after coming after the other stories. What I love about it is the way the title 'Opportunity' takes on so much meaning coming after the novel's provocation...

– NEXT (4.00, ep9) Poet Anna Jackson discussing Charlotte Grimshaw's novel Opportunity, in episode 9

The place is the context of the poetry. It's not that I write about the place, but the poetry comes out of my life in the place. So in that way it is tremendously important To me, and I'm sure i wouldn't be writing what I'm writing if I weren't in Bluff.

– Poet Cilla McQueen on moving to Bluff, in episode nine

You can read it with a perfectly straight face but kind of chuckle inwardly; that's what I like.

– Author Shonagh Koea on why she enjoys Anthony Powell's At Lady Molly's from his series Dance to the Music of Time, in episode ten

The mind of a child is a very different thing, and getting into that mind and just seeing the way the mind works...my younger daughter says 'you know if you stand on your head, you don't blink'. Now I don't know if that's true or not, but what a great line and I'm going to use that in a book that I'm writing at the moment...

– Albany author Brian Falkner on appreciating a child's way of looking at the world, in episode ten

In fact her writing reminds me of your writing actually . . . it's insightful and it's layered. And it's a bit like intellectual quicksand — you try to skim over the words and they grab you by the ankles and drag you under.

– Writer Joy Cowley compares interviewer Emily Perkins' writing to Annie Dillard (author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), in episode nine

If someone was to tell me that I'd be raving on TV about a book about Diana, that's pink, [reading on] the bus, as a straight male, I'd tell you that 'you're wrong'. Let me just tell you that it's one of the most compelling books I've read!

– Broadcaster Wallace Chapman gets laughs after praising Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles, in episode eight

He taught me everything. He just used to say, and I'll never forget that, he said 'it's not big words and adjectives — that's boring'. And I thought 'ah yes' . . . I learned from that. Simplicity is the art of writing.

– Writer and performer Bub Bridger on her mentor Michael King, in episode three

...I have a problem with historic novels, I think that they tend to become history lessons and this book at times becomes a history lesson — particularly because it's set among the intelligentsia, so they’re allowed to sit around in the drawing rooms and tell you things about Nigeria’s past.

– The Dominion Post editor Guy Somerset, on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Half of a Yellow Sun, in episode four

Writing didn't really get a look in until we had children. I made the decision that I was going to stay home and bring the kids up myself, and oddly enough that gave me the opportunity and the time to write finally. I say time very loosely there...

– Crime writer Vanda Symon on becoming a writer later in life, in episode six

...all those other 'How To' books were just about people that knew about this thing. This is different, because he's not a bird-watcher; this is his journey into that world . . . I'd like it hardbacked and leather, because it's a lovely book. It's one you'd want to treasure.

– Book panel member Marcus Lush on Steve Braunias' book How to Watch A Bird, in episode one

Hers was the first voice like hers that I had discovered in literature before. I was good at English . . . I had never come across a voice like hers before. She was a black woman from the States, and she just blew my mind...

– Poet Karlo Mila picks American poet Alice Walker as her favourite, in episode one

The fact that he can focus so deeply on a dinner, or a conversation at a beach, or you know, the impending non-consummation of a marriage, was really wonderful. It had all the depth. But I was quite captivated by the food, the English food, and how kind of unappealing it was. It was just so banal and humdrum.

– Book panel member Selina Tusiata Marsh on Ian McEwan's novella On Chesil Beach, in episode two

I have a new scarlet coat and I look like a fire engine and I don't give a damn...

– Bub Bridger recites lines from her poem 'Blatant Resistanc, in episode three

Oh it's terrifying, yeah: you come up to publication day and you suddenly realise 'right that's it, it's out in the world'. I remember when my publishers were telling me that it was starting to get on the bestseller list, and I was thinking 'Okay, well I've got a lot of family and a lot of friends, so okay that accounts for the first week'. And then I started realising that absolute strangers were gonna be reading it and...yeah it is quite terrifying actually.

– Writer Rachael King on her first novel The Sound Of Butterflies, in episode one

For me, the idea that people in the past can be present, is not a very strange idea when you've had a lot of experience with people that feel that way. Being with [knowing] elders like Eruera Stirling for 20 odd years . . . he looked at the ancestors as if they were just in the next room.

– Anne Salmond on writing about Captain Cook, in episode eight

...a lot of really bad books, like just shit books, are written with really great plots that really move along, and why should the devil have all the good tunes you know? I like a good story in a book. It's not very fashionable to say that, because people associate good stories with the kind of books that are a cop-out: books that are like bad middlebrow popular fiction. But what's bad about being entertained?

– Author Chad Taylor on the importance of a good story, in episode five

Part of that shorthand is the way that she works as well. I mean she's got this very reduced, very spare kind of style, which I loved. But more than anything I found it so compelling because of this fantastic unconsummated love, that really acts as a huge narrative pull.

– Host Emily Perkins praises Miss Me a Lot of by Louise Wareham Leonard, in episode five

It might be out of the ordinary but it's a perfectly acceptable way to live...if you want to, if you're crazy enough, to be a poet.

– Cilla McQueen on being a poet, in episode nine

...she's not a sentimental writer. There are times when she's as referential as a nun. At times she leaps into a comic, clownish dance. And times when she thunders like an Old Testament prophet.

– Writer Joy Cowley on Annie Dillard's book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, in episode nine

...legends are not only necessary to us, but however strong the legend, even if you try to demolish it, you can't. In fact you end up reinforcing it . . . We writers are mythmakers, whether we like it or not. The moment you write a book, you are very often adding to and sometimes creating a myth, and I've done both and I'm very happy with that.

– Mackenzie Affair author James McNeish, in episode seven