All my life, I have been surrounded by the track. The week I was born, Dad took me to training. I do recall at some stage being pushed around in a pram on a track. I have a lot of inspiration from him. To see him carrying the Sydney Olympic torch really ignited my dream. As a coach, he knows the in and outs of race walking and technique.

Dane Bird-Smith

When I was a teenager, me and a couple of my friends entered a couple of modeling competitions just for fun, and one of those got me an agent in Sydney.

Abbie Cornish

Teen Pet Age

The great thing about coming to Melbourne is that people talk about Sydney being the food capital but Melbourne is a lot more; it has that residential feel, a feeling of homeliness. When you go to restaurants, it's known as a creative, artistic city. That's what you get with the food.

Ainsley Harriott

Home Great Food

I'm the son of an everyman. My father is a teacher. He teaches physics at a boys' school in Sydney.

Alex O'Loughlin

Teacher Very Teaches

At one point, I was thinking about going to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but then I realized it's actually not what I wanted to do.

Alycia Debnam-Carey

Music Wanted Want

When I was a little girl, I thought I was Sydney Carton in Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' I don't think anyone else did.

Amy Bloom

Car Art Two

I've been to Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney and it's all barbed wire, it's like a big jail.

Anh Do

Wood Woo Wire

There are young children out there in our state, that could be Olympic champions at 2032 to think that Melbourne has hosted an Olympics, Sydney has hosted an Olympics, and now Queensland has that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we've got to give it everything we've got.

Annastacia Palaszczuk

Time Life Young

Sydney's a beautiful city. It was a great experience.

Barbara Hershey

Great Experience T

One of the strangest experiences one can have is to sleep on stage, as I once did in Sydney when I'd lost the key to my flat. I had to stay at night in a bed, which conveniently was on stage because my character Sandy Stone did his monologue from a bed. To wake up looking at a shadowy auditorium is a very peculiar feeling.

Barry Humphries

Experience Age Which

Sydney is rather like an arrogant lover. When it rains it can deny you its love and you can find it hard to relate to. It's not a place that's built to be rainy or cold. But when the sun comes out, it bats its eyelids, it's glamorous, beautiful, attractive, smart, and it's very hard to get away from its magnetic pull.

Baz Luhrmann

Love Art You

If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

Baz Luhrmann

Work Works T

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

Baz Luhrmann

Morning You Within

One of the great things about Sydney is that it has a great acceptance of everyone and everything. It's an incredibly tolerant city, a city with a huge multicultural basis.

Baz Luhrmann

Great Wit Very

The party is a true art form in Sydney and people practise it a great deal. You can really get quite lost in it.

Baz Luhrmann

Great Art You

The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh, inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.

Baz Luhrmann

Love Food Vent

I basically sat around unemployed in Sydney for three years straight, and the two things that saved me were the rugby league and my dog.

Ben Mendelsohn

Years Year Were

I did organize something in high school like a school walkout. These kids were locked up in their school, they weren't allowed out, but 3,000 school kids from Sydney walked out and protested. And I organized it from my mom's office at work. And I was 12.

Bojana Novakovic

Work Mom Were

I think that episode in the third season was great. I'm really glad that we did that. He got to sleep with Sydney and kill Evil Francie and go on a mission and pretend he's a rock star.

Bradley Cooper

Great Wit Third

I wanted to have the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and Sydney, and have the chance to work there.

Brendan Fraser

Work Travel Chance

I'm a Sydney suburban boy shaped entirely by the western suburbs.

Bryan Brown

Western West Urban

I didn't really like my Sydney accent - nobody likes the sound of their own voice - and when I was a little younger tried to change my accent gradually. But I've only ever really lived in Sydney and Los Angeles, so I haven't been influenced by the accents of some far-off land.

Callan McAuliffe

When I came out of drama school, I was in a shared house in Sydney.

Cate Blanchett

My last real race was at the Olympics in Sydney in 2000.

Cathy Freeman

I was born in Cairns, Queensland. Then my parents and I moved to Sydney. We moved to New Wales. We moved around Australia. I was just really close to my parents, and actually, we moved around a lot when I was very young. I think it played a big part in making me the shy teenager that I was.

Catriona Gray

If we strike a line to the N.W. from Sydney to Wellington Valley, we shall find that little change takes place in the geological features of the country.

Charles Sturt

The increasing importance of Sydney must in some measure be attributed to the flourishing condition of the colony itself, to the industry of its farmers, to the successful enterprise of its merchants, and to particular local causes.

Charles Sturt

Farming implements are as cheap in Sydney as in England.

Charles Sturt

I like a lot of independent brands - Melbourne's Kloke, Handsom and Neuw Denim, and Bassike in Sydney. It's easier to be proud of what you're wearing if you've met the people behind the brand and there's more of a personal story.

Chet Faker

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

Chris Cornell

I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn't know Australia, it came as a shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun.

Colm Toibin

From Vienna with Love' will build a bridge across the globe from Vienna to Sydney, full of music, love and fun. I am really looking forward to performing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and fabulous guest artists who all have ties to Vienna and telling a story with music that inspired me and songs from my debut album.

Conchita Wurst

All my life, I have been surrounded by the track. The week I was born, Dad took me to training. I do recall at some stage being pushed around in a pram on a track. I have a lot of inspiration from him. To see him carrying the Sydney Olympic torch really ignited my dream. As a coach, he knows the in and outs of race walking and technique.

Dane Bird-Smith

I grew up in Sydney, Australia, and I started doing acting classes when I was in eighth grade.

Danielle Macdonald

My first job in advertising was actually in the mailroom of Grey Advertising in Sydney.

David Droga

When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Julliard, and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia.

Deborah Kara Unger

When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Juilliard and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia.

Deborah Kara Unger

In Nova Scotia, there are some definite down-home accents, and it's funny because you can go to Sydney, and one guy is from North Sydney, and you can't understand a thing he's saying, or Glace Bay or wherever.

Diego Klattenhoff

I'm a gypsy at heart. I have a little triangle where I tend to go, which is between Sydney, Los Angeles, and London, and I'm happy with that at the moment.

Elizabeth Debicki

Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.

Essie Davis

I think the unemployment rate for actors is pretty much the same in Sydney, London and New York. In all three cities, there are more actors than there are jobs. But I do think that there are far more acting opportunities in London and New York than in Sydney, where there are approximately seven actors that you see over and over again in every play.

Essie Davis

I know how to get around London better than Sydney.

Evonne Goolagong Cawley

Mum and Dad have come to Sydney to see me off on the two trips to Wimbledon. Each time I thought I mustn't cry 'cos that'll start Mum off. Each time I really bawled, and then she started up.

Evonne Goolagong Cawley

I think Sydney has so much natural beauty; it's just a beautiful city.

Flume

Sydney's beautiful, the weather's great, and the air's fresh and clean, but it doesn't have the scene and the amount of likeminded people. At home, things are very comfortable, but I feel like putting myself out there a bit.

Flume

I think the thing that L.A. had on Sydney is an awesome music scene, especially for what I do.

Flume

I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.

Frank Gehry

I have a few homes. I have my family home in Adelaide where my parents and my brothers and sisters are, and I have a few friends and my place where I used to live in Sydney, and then my husband and our family in London, so... I'm from everywhere and nowhere.

Genevieve O'Reilly

And so in my warnings, I was pointing to a number of incidents around the communion that could undermine our growing sense of communion - of becoming a global communion. So that's why I pointed to New Westminster in Canada, to incidents in the United States, and Sydney itself.

George Carey

Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.

Geraldine Brooks

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

Geraldine Brooks