Quotes from Taika Waititi

I've always felt that I wanted to make a Marvel film... I just want to make sure I'm not making an episode.

People overcoming the odds is actually a really important part of humanity, and I don't think we kind of get to celebrate that as much as we should.

My father is a visual artist, so I was influenced by him, and my mother is an English teacher who forced me to read a lot of books and poetry and get involved in theatre. I developed a varied taste for different arts.

A set should be like a family, except that you all actually like each other.

'Eagle vs Shark' is a little film I could take risks with and make mistakes on.

You make up a character, there's always gonna be parts of you that, like it or not, shine through.

As kids, we all thought Bob Marley was Maori.

I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of film-maker - becoming the Maori story film-maker because I had made those short films.

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.

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

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.

I find that a lot of child actors are ruined once they've done a job.

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.

Most people in their lives do feel like they are outsiders at some point.

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

To make filmmaking interesting to me, I want to keep learning things.

I daydream all the time.

I've always said that, first and foremost, I make films for New Zealanders. They're my target audience. Then after that, if people appreciate my stories from outside this country, then that's an added bonus.

Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they're spiritual and telling stories like 'Whale Rider' and 'Once Were Warriors,' quite serious stuff, but we're pretty funny people, and we never really have had an opportunity to show that side of ourselves, the clumsy, nerdy side of ourselves, which is something I am.

I'm not very proud of coming from a place that everyone thinks is this pure green country whereas, in reality, all our lakes and waterways are poison.

I think everyone has experienced those boring arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes.

My job is to express myself.

I've been on a lot of film sets, and I've always promised myself I wouldn't create a set where people dread coming to work.

When I became a film-maker, all my favourite films, they weren't comedies.