Quotes by Australian authors

"Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in the wind, how can you look the other actor in the eye to respond to them?"

"One of the difficulties of not knowing for so long whether we were doing a fifth season or not was that we weren't really allowed to go out shopping for work"

"You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls - it's a bit scary, actually"

"It's important to travel and move and have a continual set of experiences so you've got more to feed back into your work. For me, it's a natural thing"

"It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career"

"I had never done anything with blue screen before, or prosthetics, or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a videogame for me. It was another world completely. But, to be honest, I basically did it so that I could have the ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head.Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it"

"I feel that I'm at my best as a person and that I'm coming home when I walk on to a set, or on to a stage, so if I can perform in one way or another I think I'll be okay"

"When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback"

"How strange to use "You only live once" as an excuse to throw it away"

"We don't have any sailors in Australia, we have rowers"

"I don't have a sense of entitlement or that I deserve this. You'd be surprised at the lack of competition between nominees - I think a lot of it's imposed from the outside. Can I have my champagne now?"

"It's not important to how the band functions or to what we do. That's just many people's opinions on what they see. A lot of people project stuff on you, but that's okay"

"Dante didn't work out, and then we found Ryan. He worked at a comic, record and toy store in Fremont"

"I always liked the intensity of the recording"

"We loved Andy, so we wanted to keep him. He was in both bands, but Nerve Agents broke up"

"I really wanted to work hard on my lyrics"

"The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever"

"In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films"

"For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes"

"Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied"

"You got to try and reach for the stars or try and achieve the unreachable"

"I'm not a marriage expert, quite clearly"

"I think the greatest amount of pressure is the pressure I place on myself. So in a way I chose to be alone"

"I made my first Australian senior team when I was 16, first Olympics when I was 19, and I retired. I'm 32, I retired four years ago, so a good third of my life or nearly a third of my life has been all about running"

"Lots of people I know have bootlegged tapes of performances and if they play it I will be transported back sometimes with happiness, sometimes with horror"

"After all is said and done, sit down"

"Carbon is probably a bit harder to wrap since it's procedural"

"Mum, who had been a dancer with a small ballet company before she got married, was full of encouragement. She didn't say, 'This is really good, you should do this', She just encouraged us to do whatever we liked"

"We save paradise by an intense education program where you get people that you can trust to talk sanely about the environment and hope that the message will get through"

"If you can't protect yourself with talk, you won't be alive to protect yourself with guns"

"With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life"

"The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals"

"Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances"

"In silent movies, they tended to put the camera down, and everybody walked in front of it and acted, and then they all walked off. Cutting was quite infrequent"

"In my view, the operas of Carlisle Floyd will find a place in the permanent repertoire"

"Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans wearing those big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is, nobody wears these hats at all"

"This occasion is personally very meaningful and I hope to visit Korea again if I have the chance"

"Money makes life easier but I don't want to be rich, not at all"

"I don't have a lot of regrets in my life"

"Australians are a fantastic bunch of people but the attention can be overwhelming for someone like me"