Keri Hulme Quotes & Sayings

She had debated, in the frivolity of the beginning, whether to build a hole or a tower; a hole, because she was fond of hobbits, or a tower - well, a tower for many reasons, but chiefly because she liked spiral staircases. — Keri Hulme

I spent a considerable amount of time when I was, o, adolescent, wondering why I was different, whether there were other people like me. Why, when everyone else was fascinated by their developing sexual nature, I couldn't give a damn. I've never been attracted to men. Or women. Or anything else. It's difficult to explain, but while I have an apparently normal female body, I don't have any sexual urge or appetite. — Keri Hulme

Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth ... — Keri Hulme

They were nothing more than people, by themselves. Even paired, any pairing, they would have been nothing more than people by themselves. But all together, they have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, something strange and growing and great.
Together, all together, they are the instruments of change. — Keri Hulme

Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be. — Keri Hulme

I have a grasshopper and haphazard mind y'know, a brain that listens to all sorts of things as well as itself. — Keri Hulme

I am exceedingly angry for no good reason. — Keri Hulme

I am in limbo, and in limbo there are no races, no prizes, no changes, no chances. There are merely degrees of endurance, and endurance never was my strong point. — Keri Hulme

The childhood years are the best years of your life ... Whoever coined that was an unmitigated fuckwit, a bullshit artist supreme. Life gets better the older you grow, until you grow too old of course. — Keri Hulme

Oh all the world is a little queer, except thee and me, and sometimes, I wonder about thee. — Keri Hulme

Wars of small kingdoms and forgotten lands, what do chessmen dream of in the dark? — Keri Hulme

A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart. — Keri Hulme

The color has faded out of the sky. It is grey, becoming darker as the world turns herself round a little more. The clouds are long and black and ragged, like the wings of stormbattered dragons. — Keri Hulme

Why? is the boy's motto, why does, why is, why not? Food, weather, time, fires, sea and season, clothes and cars and people; it's all grist to the mill of why. — Keri Hulme

But something. Something has died. Isn't there now. I can't paint.' There are tears in her voice but none in her eyes. 'I am dead inside'. — Keri Hulme

You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read ... — Keri Hulme

She has this curious heavy grace, like something out of its element making do in a heavier medium. Like she should be living in water. — Keri Hulme

I am not a person to say the words out loud / I think them strongly, or let them hunger from the page. — Keri Hulme

All the land is filled with mysteries, and this place fairly sings with them. — Keri Hulme

Between waking and being awake there is a moment full of doubt and dream, when you struggle to remember what the place and when the time and whether you really are.
A peevish moment of wonderment as to where the real world lies. — Keri Hulme

The smarter you are, the more you know, the less reason you have to trust or love or confide. — Keri Hulme

A moon shining a broken road oversea; a lone woman naked to her waist waits at the edge of moonlight; a shadow person watching for meaning somewhere. — Keri Hulme

I know about me. I am the moons sister, a tidal child stranded on land. The sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent in my blood. — Keri Hulme

I am not dead yet! I can still call forth a piece of soul and set it down in color, fixed forever. — Keri Hulme

But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk ... — Keri Hulme

It's the possibility that when you're dead you might still go on hurting that bothers me. — Keri Hulme

I have watched the river and the sea for a lifetime. I have seen rivers rob soil from the roots of trees until the giants came foundering down. I have watched shores slip and perish, the channels silt and change; what was beach become a swamp and a headland tumble into the sea. An island has eroded in silent pain since my boyhood, and reefs have become islands. Yet the old people used to say, People pass away, but not the land. It remains forever. Maybe that is so. The land changes. The land continues. The sea changes. The sea remains. — Keri Hulme

The company you keep at death is, of all things, most dependent on chance. — Keri Hulme

Or," she looked down into the drink, "I used to. Now it feels like the best part of me has got lost in the way I live. — Keri Hulme

Betelgeuse, Achenar. Orion. Aquila. Centre the Cross and you have a steady compass. But there's no compass for my ever disoriented soul, only ever beckoning ghost lights. In the one sure direction, to the one sure end. — Keri Hulme

If I were you, the operator sounds happy he's not. — Keri Hulme

Sunflowers and seashells and logarithmic spirals (said Kerewin); sweep of galaxies and the singing curve of the universe (said Kerewin); the oscilating wave thrumming in the nothingness of every atom's heart (said Kerewin); did you think I could build a square house? So the round shell house holds them all in its spiralling embrace. Noise and riot, peace and quiet, all is music in this sphere. — Keri Hulme

There is a time, when passing through a light, that you walk in your own shadow. — Keri Hulme

I have faced Death. I have been caught in the wild weed tangles of Her hair, seen the gleam of her jade eyes. I will go when it is time - no choice! - but now I want life. — Keri Hulme