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02 October 2024

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

‘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

‘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

‘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 llama sure was calmer though, before the farmer came.’

Marmaduke Duck and the Marmalade Jam, Juliette MacIver, Scholastic New Zealand, 2010

‘Suddenly there was the sea.’

The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate, Margaret Mahy, Puffin Books, 1985

These classic books from Aotearoa New Zealand authors are available in local bookstores and on BookHub.