On the similarities between Connor Morris and her father:
"My dad wasn't very supportive of me during all my drugs stuff and Connor and his family were amazingly supportive ... Both of them were stubborn as f***. Ridiculous. I don't know if Connor was like dad! But, yeah, they were both very stubborn and hard-headed."
On being likened to the Kennedys:
"The Kennedys! Sweet Jesus. That's grandiose. F***en hell. I don't know about that! Do the Kennedys live in West Auckland? F***!"Full interview
On being asked if her ex-partner, Chris Houston, is still being a house-husband:
"Chris and I have separated. I thought you might have known that. That's the whole thing about me having a sit-down with you."Full interview
"Have you seen actors? They look like lollipops. Who would want to look like a lollipop? They're like stick people. Their thighs are the size of my arms. I like cake. I like eating."Full interview
And on whether he would have a beer if he failed in his beer-sponsored world record attempt (he did fail):
"I might have a few commiseratory beers! I don't get crazy drunk. No"Full interview
On the media's obsession with her boobs:
"Oh the boobs! The boobs are fine. Apparently [my cleavage] has its own website!"Full interview
"We have just transformed the accounting industry, you know! People wear T-shirts now! They get excited about accounting!"Full interview
On being asked if her partner, Julie, is fat:
"No, Julie is not fat! Yes! She's skinnier than me. There's a word in Afrikaans for what Julie is, because in English it's very limiting - you're either thin or you're fat. But in Afrikaans, you're mollig, so that means you're sort of cuddly. You're not skinny, you're not fat, you're in sort of in that nice in-between. I think a lot of South African women were built to last the distance! Ha, ha!"Full interview
On being asked if he's an artist:
"No, I'm an artisan. I think fashion designers, as they lose their humbleness, can become megalomaniacs."Full interview
On being asked about "golden stuff" falling from the belly button of a man in one of his paintings:
"Oh. That's a bit of personal narrative. I got Crohn's disease when I was about 35 and had an operation and that's called stoma. You don't have to put it in the paper... but that's a kind of metaphor for what I do. I try to turn shit into gold. So it's gold shit."Full interview
One why he doesn't have a mobile phone:
"I don't think the NSA is spying on me... The reason I don't have a cellphone... is that I think people have their lives taken over with clutter. And the main thing I want in my life is time to think. There's going to be a backlash one day... of people who think: 'This hasn't actually freed me up; this has enslaved me.' That's what I reckon."Full interview
"It's a boring, boring day. Your wild orang-utan's life is pretty dull."Full interview
"I don't go anywhere without clean shoes. That's one thing I've got from the navy."Full interview
On that giant rugby ball for Tourism NZ:
"When I first got here, I thought, 'Oh my God! The arts, the arts, the arts. Everybody's sports mad in this f***ing country.' Look at the paper. It's 90 per cent sport and a tiny little bit on the arts, if you're lucky. So when they suggested a stunt, a giant rugby ball, putting it around the world, I went, 'Hmm.' I have never met anyone who went inside and went, 'Ooh. Boring.'"Full interview
On blokes asking her out (or not asking her out) on dates:
"I totally accept that it's probably an unusual thing to ask a politician out because you don't know their circumstances. I do think that people assume often that you have a reasonably settled life if you're crazy enough to go and be a politician."Full interview
On Nicky Hager's book, The Hollowmen:
"The most manipulative and devious person in that exercise was the author of the book. He is the most extraordinary PR practitioner in New Zealand. You look at what he did to Helen Clark over that completely manufactured GE issue. That was an intervention into an election year, designed to try and influence that result."Full interview
On why she wears high heels:
"I actually think that dress for women lawyers is quite important. It's still quite hard out there for most women lawyers and I think one of the reasons is that some people still find it difficult to see women as authoritative. And so I think the dress can assist in that regard."Full interview