I long for the days when athletes were revered. I want to see the romance return to sports, to see people enjoy the game purely for the game and the players.

I was totally dominated and revered my father. I admired everything he did. He was a great sports person. He loved me. I was his only boy at that time, before my brother Billy came along.

The New Zealand culture and nature is such that we find it very difficult to celebrate creative achievement. In order to get New Zealanders' respect you have to dominate the world like Peter Jackson has done. He is absolutely revered.

The best students come from homes where education is revered: where there are books, and children see their parents reading them.

Nearly all human cultures plant gardens, and the garden itself has ancient religious connections. For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Christian European beliefs, and the pagan devotions to sacred groves of trees and sacred springs. My German translator gave me a fascinating book on the archaeology of Old Europe, and in it I discovered ancient artifacts that showed that the Old European cultures once revered snakes, just as we Pueblo Indian people still do. So I decided to take all these elements - orchids, gladiolus, ancient gardens, Victorian gardens, Native American gardens, Old European figures of Snake-bird Goddesses - and write a novel about two young sisters at the turn of the century.

I long for the days when athletes were revered. I want to see the romance return to sports to see people enjoy the game purely for the game and the players.

Used to be conservatives revered the Average American that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food humble faith honest toil and Capraesque virtue.