Taika Waititi

“My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.”

“I'm always fascinated by the theme of children who parent the adults.”

“My favorite was 'The Lost Boys.' Corey Haim wore this trench coat, and I made my mum buy me a trench coat. I wore it to school, to primary school.”

“I've never been a guy who was anal about housework. A typical Wellington flat when I was flatting was a warehouse with, basically, sheets hung up for walls.”

“Indigenous people in films, it's all, like, nose flutes and panpipes and, you know, people talking to ghosts... which I hate.”

“To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event.”

“I don't like laughing at people unless they're in a privileged position or if they're in authority. If it's poor people or people who live on the outskirts or on the margins, or the underdog, I'd rather be laughing with them.”

“We all have to remember that New Zealand is built on these kind of people who are rebels and renegades, people doing it their own way, fighting for freedom, and braving the elements. I think it's cool to celebrate that.”

“There's nothing cooler than going to work and hanging around with your friends and laughing, because it's something that you get told off for throughout your entire time at school... it's just like a big 'in your face' to those bully teachers that you had when you were a kid.”

“I'd loved 'Iron Man,' you know, with a passion. I thought that was the most fresh, cool thing, in terms of superhero movies, that I'd seen in a long time.”

“Films that are easy to sell happen to be the worst films. Look at the poster for 'Wrath of the Titans' and 'John Carter': they're exactly the same. You could switch titles.”

“I always wanted to play a dapper gentleman, and I also always wanted to play my mum.”

“'Eagle vs Shark' was about keeping myself sane. I wanted to go back to my comedy roots with people I trusted and had worked with before and do something low-budget and more experimental.”

“I wish I was less good-looking and more unpopular. Then I could get into politics and use my pent-up resentment about being ugly and unpopular to systematically destroy the country.”

“I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.”

“The ridiculous events in everyday life are often overlooked - people don't recognise it as potentially cinematic.”

“I like flawed characters, and I like seeing people who are supposed to be not villains but antagonists. There are elements to them, which are really annoying, but you kind of see where they came from. You see the things that caused those inadequacies.”

“Characters I create are just mixtures of the people I know.”