Home > Author > Keri Hulme

Keri Hulme QUOTES

Keri Hulme QUOTES

1 " 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 Bone People

2 " 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

3 " Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth... "

― Keri Hulme , The Bone People

4 " 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 , The Bone People

5 " The smarter you are, the more you know, the less reason you have to trust or love or confide. "

― Keri Hulme

6 " 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

7 " 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

8 " 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 , The Bone People

9 " You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read... "

― Keri Hulme , The Bone People

10 " But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk… "

― Keri Hulme , The Bone People

11 " Oh all the world is a little queer, except thee and me, and sometimes, I wonder about thee. "

― Keri Hulme , The Bone People

12 " 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 , The Bone People

13 " 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 , The Bone People

14 " I don't like kissing."

"I suppose it is a matter of taste."[...]"I wondered, did anyone ever," shrug, "you know, hurt you so you don't like kissing? love?"

"Nope."[...]

"I thought maybe someone had been bad to you in the past, and that was why you don't like people touching or holding you."

"Ah damn it to hell," she bangs the lamp down on the desk and the flame jumps wildly.
"I said no. I haven't been raped or jilted or abused in any fashion. There is nothing in my background to explain the way I am." She steadies her voice, taking the impatience out of it. "I'm the odd one out, the peculiarity in my family, because they are all normal and demonstrative physically. But ever since I can remember, I've disliked close contact...charge contact, emotional contact, as well as any overtly sexual contact. I veer away from it, because it always feels like the other person is draining something out of me. I know that's irrational, but that's the way I feel."

She touches the lamp and the flaring light stills.

"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 facinated 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, and nobody has ever believed it when I have tried to explain, but while I have an apparently normal female body, I don't have any sexual urge or appetite. I think I am a neuter. "

― Keri Hulme , The Bone People

15 " 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

16 " I am worn, down to the raw nub of my soul.
Now is the time, o bitter beer, soothe my spirit;
smooth mouth of whisky, tell me lies of truth;
but better still, sweet wine, be harbinger of deep and dreamless sleep.... "

― Keri Hulme , The Bone People

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

― Keri Hulme

18 " 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

19 " 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 , The Bone People

20 " 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