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Quintessential Quotes from Aotearoa Authors
We asked around on social media for your favourite quotes from Aotearoa New Zealand literature and you didn’t disappoint! From Catherine Chidgey to Margaret Mahy, here is a round-up of your top quotes:
‘People tell bad stories about magpies. That we hold the souls of gossips.’
The Axeman's Carnival, Catherine Chidgey, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022
‘If you are swimming and see a great white man-eating shark heading straight for you, the thing to do is to leave the water in a quiet and dignified way. But Mrs Scorpio did not know this.’
The Great White Man-Eating Shark, Margaret Mahy (illustrations by Jonathan Allen), Puffin, 1996
‘It is an act of love to learn a language, an act of becoming.’
Kurangaituku, Whiti Hereaka, Huia, 2021
I am worse in the summer
than I am in the winter. I get wild
in the summer.
How I Get Ready, Ashleigh Young, THWUP 2019
‘People think the trees are spare, but in truth they are consciousness primed with leaves, responding to the touch of the seasons like a bewildering skin of nerves.’
The Bone People, Keri Hulme, Penguin Books, 1984
‘The llama sure was calmer though, before the farmer came.’
Marmaduke Duck and the Marmalade Jam, Juliette MacIver, Scholastic New Zealand, 2010
‘We live by the sea, which hems and stitches the scalloped edges of the land.’
Pōtiki, Patricia Grace, University of Hawaii Press, 1986
‘My story, as a Māori mother marching for land rights alongside my brothers and sisters of Ihumātao, is connected to the story of a wahine Māoli atop Mauna Kea right now, telling her imperial occupier that he has taken enough from her.’
Kia Mau: Resisting Colonial Fictions, Tina Ngata, Kia Mau Campaign, 2019
'I think he took it all with him. Time. He took it. Is that foolish?'
Bird Life, Anna Smaill, THWUP 2023
‘It felt better to forgive him. I hardly wanted him to know, that it could be so easy, just to let him off the hook. I wouldn't have to carry him then.’
52 Men, Louise Wareham Leonard, Red Hen Press, 2015
'The only thing that looked at her was the dispassionate sky and it looked at everything with the same gaze.'
The New Animals, Pip Adam, THWUP 2017
'What, in all the world, could I do to earn my living and still live as myself, as I knew myself to be.'
An Angel at my Table, Janet Frame, Virago 2024 (new edition)
These classic books from Aotearoa New Zealand authors are available in local bookstores and on BookHub.
