Keri Hulme

Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme (9 March 1947 – 27 December 2021) was a New Zealand novelist, poet and short-story writer. She also wrote under the pen name Kai Tainui.

Quotes

The Bone People (1984)

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth

Quotes about

• Keri Hulme, tena koe, whanaunga o roto o Ngai-Tahu, o Ngati-Mamoe! You have the nerve to leave the reader with the heart-ache of responding to the crying of many aching bones! What a dilemma! Ah! But what a wonderful piece of art you have created!
  • Arapera Blank 1984 review of Keri Hulme's The Bone People in NZ Listener

• Years ago, an enthusiastic Australian critic tried to tell me how he felt on first reading Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. “He gave us ourselves!” he exclaimed. I now understand what he meant. Keri Hulme has given us – us.
  • Joy Cowley 1984 review of Keri Hulme's The Bone People in NZ Listener