Mutuwhenua Quotes

“After tea [Nanny Ripeka] began to tell me the old photographs, which I already knew, fading on every wall. Tell me who they were and what they were to me. Then she told me of the ones before that, who were not on the walls but whom she had known. Then back before that to the ones she had never known or seen. And her voice that had been slow at the beginning and thoughtful began to chant out the ancient names coming from far back, so I could know them. I was beginning to know them because I had heard them many times before. Beginning to know, yet knowing there was more to understand.”
― Patricia Grace, Mutuwhenua : the moon sleeps