21 Quotes by Theresa Sjoquist

I realised that I had become too introverted. When you are the person everyone comes to in an isolated area, you have no-one to discuss things with. It's good up to a point but dreadful in a way. You simply have to have the corners rubbed off you and have criticism that's pretty cruel if you are to toe the line.

Later in life the force of abstinence was to really be understood and my parent's problems became very clear. When will man appreciate his pleasures and respect them enough to indulge in moderation?

I know where I am going now with art. I have found myself. Yvonne Rust 1994, aged 72.

Knowledge is addictive. Keep it up.

In my small way I became an integral part of the pottery movement, and added fuel to the fire which consumed New Zealand and and swept pottery to the forefront of the of the fifties and sixties.

The pa system has broken down. Society has broken down.

Meanwhile the doctor in Kaitaia had made known to the Education Dept the behaviour patterns of the Rusts in Te Hapua. The Dept always interfered in the private lives of teachers. Break up in marriage was not to be tolerated and an intervention of this authority forced the Rusts to report to Parawera School in the Waikato.

Today they are teaching the subject of art as a frill in school, partly due to intellectual preciousness that has crept into art departments with the making of the History of Art. Intellectualising places art on a pedestal only for the few, causing New Zealanders to revert to the invented snobbery that tends to ignore anything arty as exotic, unattainable, not wholesome.

When Margot died after a car accident in which my sister was also seriously injured in November 1970, I sat on a hill behind a friend's house in Greymouth trying to get my head around having to identify the body of my university sweetheart. Yvonne was the only one who came with condolences (Paul Caffyn)