The Bone People Quotes

“You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Oh all the world is a little queer, except thee and me, and sometimes, I wonder about thee.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“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

“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

“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

“Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth...”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“There really is no place like home, even when it's grown a couple of sizes too small...”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“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

“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

“The only defence he could raise against the dark and the horror and the laughing terrible voice were his golden singers, the sounds and patterns of words from the past that he had fitted to his own web of music. They often broke apart, but he could always make them new. So he lay prone on the floor, and listened to them, and made Kerewin part of them, part of his heart.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“What does he mean by disgraceful propensities?"

"Weelll, I should imagine in that ingrown aristocracy it could mean anything from an improper preference for scotch whisky, to a practiced predilection for raping the cat."

He chokes on his coffee.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“Co-eye, kor-fie, alla same tree. . . . That's part of a poem, believe it or not. These are seeds of a tree, golden seeds for golden flowers.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“What is your objection to hospitalisation and treatment?” The doctor is curious but dispassionate. “Primarily, that I forgo control over myself and my destiny. Secondly, medicine is in a queer state of ignorance. It knows a lot, enough to be aware that it is ignorant, but practitioners are loath to admit that ignorance to patients. And there is no holistic treatment. Doctor does not confer with religious who does not confer with dietician who does not confer with psychologist. And from what I can learn about cancer treatment, the attempted cure is often worse than the disease . . .”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“It was a hermitage, her glimmering retreat. No people invited, for what could they know of the secrets that crept and chilled and chuckled in the marrow of her bones? No need of people, because she was self-fulfilling, delighted with the pre-eminence of her art, and the future of her knowing hands.
But the pinnacle become an abyss, and the diving joy ended. At last there was a prison.
I am encompassed by a wall, high and hard and stone, with only my brainy nails to tear it down.
And I cannot do it.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People