The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival was rather terrific. And not just the big four: Richard E Grant, Richard Ford, Tim Winton and Pico Iyer. Lumičre Associate Editor ALEXANDER BISLEY picks a baker’s dozen of sure-to-rise quotes.


“I never stopped loving your mother,” Richard E Grant reflects on his father’s deathbed words.

“Cut it,” the publisher’s reaction to Don Winslow’s war-on-drugs tome The Power of the Dog. Winslow’s reaction was also two words.

“Writing’s a physical activity,” Don Winslow.

“You’ve got Caligula’s room and you’ve got a gentle vicar,” Will Hutton is lost for words at the National Herald’s corruption hysteria, making the comparison with China.

“I don’t trust anything I see or read in the media,” Pico Iyer.

“We have nothing like this in the US,” Pico Iyer on the AK Writers’ Fest.

“I blame it on Reagan,” Richard Ford on America’s current malaise.

“He was of course drunken,” Richard Ford on meeting William Faulkner.

“They were as desperate as I was,” Richard E Grant recounts how it took the producers of Withnail and I a year to find their leading man.

“So where is home?” a white Zimbabwean poignantly questions Richard E.

“A tadpole going into an ocean of killer sharks,” Richard E on releasing a Wah-Wah in today’s mercenary movie market.

“Don’t have sex beforehand. Don’t masturbate beforehand,” Florian Habicht tells the youngies how to write a love scene.

“I didn’t think it would be seen. So I didn’t think about privacy,” Roseanne Liang on making Banana in a Nutshell.