Three New Zealanders: Sylvia Ashton-Warner

I don't write 'deliberately'. Do we breathe 'deliberately'?

– Sylvia Ashton-Warner

She had been confronted with the basis of one of the problems that this bicultural society has still not solved: how does an education system that's geared for middle class Pākehā New Zealanders interest, let alone teach, a Māori child whose sense of values are often so different?

– Narrator, on Sylvia Ashton-Warner's early challenges

I seperated the two, the domestic little loving wife ... and locked the artist away in the study ... I'd have to go to him now and again but I wouldn't bring him back into the home. Things settled so much better when I kept him away like a wild animal, somewhere in a cave.

– Sylvia Ashton-Warner, on her dual roles as both wife and artist