This is the difficulty about talking about it without sounding big-headed, but you cannot speak of New Zealand now without my involvement in what it has become.

We do not wish to have nuclear weapons on New Zealand soil or in our harbors. We do not ask, we do not expect, the United States to come to New Zealand's assistance with nuclear weapons or to present American nuclear capability as a deterrent to an attacker.

You have to talk about why things happened the way they did. You can't actually explain my political life except by a series of situations rather than by some carefully constructed, rigidly progressed ascendancy.

It's a funny thing when you think you're dead. You're not terrified of it anymore. There's a sort of a epiphany to religious thing; it's not sort of church-based, but you end up with a serenity which you didn't have before, and I just simply enjoy it. It really does sound stupid, but I've got to tell you it's made my life.

Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

One big difference between our situation in Myanmar and other situations around the world is that we're not just trying to achieve peace with one group but 11 groups - so it is incredibly complicated as well.

After World War II it was decided that, in order to prevent the Germans and the French from having another war, it would be better to tie them together into one economic pact so they would invest in each other and have mutual stakes. Until now, that has worked to prevent warfare between the two.