171 quotes found
"Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small — but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people."
"To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure."
"To work — to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do."
"It's a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath — as terrible as you like — but a mask."
"If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple — you salt them well, put them aside and have patience. But with love, you have no sooner lighted on anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to it than you are perfectly certain it is not only a genuine specimen, but perhaps the only genuine mushroom ungathered."
"I'm a writer first & a woman after."
"I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to become a writer can afford to indulge in it. You can't get it into shape; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in."
"Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do."
"It's an infernal nuisance to love Life as I do. I seem to love it more as time goes on rather than less. It never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel. I do hope I'll be able to keep in it long enough to do some really good work. I'm sick of people dying who promise well."
"Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me."
"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."
"Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all."
"By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun."
"Warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for. … This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it’s no longer so. I feel happy — deep down. All is well."
"Were we positive, eager, real — alive? No, we were not. We were a nothingness shot with gleams of what might be."
"When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves."
"Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."
"By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun, all that we mean when we speak of the external world. I want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious, direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others."
"I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for."
"When I say "I fear" — don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other."
"This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel happy — deep down. May you be happy too. I'm going to Fontainebleau on Monday and I'll be back here Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. All is well."
"Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude."
"I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing."
"The world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers. I have known a few instances of intensity but that is all. I want to find a world in which these instances are united. Shall I succeed? I scarcely care. What is important is to try & learn to live, and in relation to everything – not isolated. This isolation is death to me."
"I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses."
"Once we have learned to read, the meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness."
"Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every month. Others just go over them."
"The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be."
"I want to recall her as she was day by day as a woman friend and neighbour, gay and gallant and wonderful."
"If I had to describe her in one word I would choose the word exquisite. She was exquisite in her person: soft, fine, shiny brown hair and delicately grained skin, not tall and not small and not thin nor stout, just right. When we went bathing I thought her pretty as a statuette. She was always scrupulously groomed."
"I think that in some abstruse way Murry corrupted and perverted and destroyed Katherine both as a person and a writer. She was a very serious writer, but her gifts were those of an intense realist, with a superb sense of ironic humour and fundamental cynicism. She got enmeshed in the sticky sentimentality of Murry and wrote against the grain of her own nature. At the bottom of her mind she knew this, I think, and it enraged her. And that was why she was so often enraged against Murry."
"[On 2 June] I lunched with K.M. & had 2 hours priceless talk—priceless in the sense that to no one else can I talk in the same disembodied way about writing; without altering my thought more than I alter it in writing here."
"This is where we start. Let it be blank. Blank is different from nothing.”"
"Alas, being a New Zealander is such an exquisite dilemma."
"We bow only to the highest mountain."
"In the small things is the genetic imprint of the larger things... You must reverse the small things as well as the larger things. You must learn to see not just with your eyes but with your heart and intelligence."
"When everybody else is bending with the wind, very few people will lean against it."
"When I began to write in the 1970s there were three women I considered my elders: Katerina Mataira, Arapera Blank and Jacquie Sturm. They were like spinners working on a loom and their great triumph, together with that of Hone Tuwhare and Patricia Grace, was to begin spinning the tradition from which all contemporary Maori writers come."
"When you're sorting yourself out, family are not often the ones you can turn to. They represent the place of departure and not the place of arrival.”"
"Lots of people come just to dance and have a good time. Here you can do anything you want to do, be anyone you want to be. It's called freedom. Be careful, it can be contagious."
"It felt right not to talk. It felt good just to be. Sometimes there was no need to fill the air with words.”"
"I have always loved long journeys. The act of leaving accustomed surroundings is a release from real time, real life. You can place that familiar life on hold, freeze it, secure in the awareness that it will be there waiting for you when you come back. The journey itself becomes an opportunity to explore parallel lives, those other optional lives which have always been there."
"In the old days, in the years that have gone before us, the land and sea felt a great emptiness, a yearning. The mountains were like a stairway to heaven, and the lush green rainforest was a rippling cloak of many colors. The sky was iridescent, swirling with the patterns of wind and clouds; sometimes it reflected the prisms of rainbow or southern aurora. The sea was ever-changing, shimmering and seamless to the sky. This was the well at the bottom of the world, and when you looked into it you felt could see to the end of forever. (beginning)"
"Hui e, haumi e, taiki e. Let it be done."
"Sometimes life has a habit of flooding over you and rushing you along in its overwhelming tide. (p63)"
"He loved them deeply, but sometimes love becomes a power game between the ambitions that parents have for their children and the ambitions that children have for themselves. (p66)"
"The muted thunder boomed underwater like a great door opening far away. Suddenly the sea was filled with awesome singing, a song with eternity in it. (p95)"
"The moon was drenching the sky with loneliness. (p107)"
"He raised his arms as if to claw down the sky upon him. (p133)"
"I think the time was just right for myself and for people like Witi Ihimaera and Hone Tuwhare. The real pioneers were JC Sturm, Rowley Habib, Arapera Blank, Rose Denness and Mason Durie and those writers I had started to see published in the journal of the Māori Affairs Department, Te Ao Hou."
"While the dull talk idly streams, He sits upon the bank and dreams, Till some careless word that's said Finds a fellow in his head..."
"A time will come, a time will come, (Though the world will never be quite the same), When the people sit in the summer sun, Watching, watching the beautiful game."
"What use the green river, the gold place, if time and death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest from taking underground the green all-willowed and white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?"
"From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth."
"The word permanent... had its own kind of revenge on those who misused it, for the Bible said that nothing was permanent and everything came and went."
"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. (from the Prologue, p4)"
"Between waking and being awake there is a moment full of doubt and dream, when you struggle to remember what the place and when the time and whether you really are. A peevish moment of wonderment as to where the real world lies. (chapter 1)"
"Hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk. (chapter 2, p71)"
"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. (chapter 3, p94)"
"Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth.... (chapter 6, p249)"
"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!"
"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."
"It was a huge learning curve, to be honest. I never pictured myself writing a novel, so when my husband suggested I take some time off work and do some writing, I thought I’ll have a go at some short stories. And then I discovered this story, and it just wouldn’t fit within the form of the short story, so I enrolled in a fiction course – I had joined it for short stories, though it was generally for beginning fiction – but I had to figure this out a lot quicker than the course offered, so alongside that I bought about thirty books on ‘how to’, and how other authors have done it, and really threw myself into figuring out the structure of a novel. With poetry you can’t just ‘dip in’ – the poems are a complete little story on their own, they are like little starbursts. But this story took two years, and I couldn’t write poetry that whole time, because it just felt like a completely different discipline. What I did learn was to try and bring the poetry through with me, so I still felt like a poet writing this book. So in a way I think I’ve been able to have the best of both worlds."
"Yes I hope so – I want to continue to write fiction, I really have the fiction writing bug, but I hope I haven’t lost the knack for writing poetry. I’m going to keep plugging away at it every now and then, because I do love it. It’s a very difficult art form, and I admire the people who have done very well at it."
"Yes, I’ve been quite overwhelmed actually. It’s really not what you expect, especially for a first novel, so I am absolutely thrilled that people are connecting – not only to the family side, the interest in chasing your own roots – but also to the history of Pakeha in New Zealand, and what it was like from that side too. I’m really intrigued to see what people find in it – they all find something different, and I’m liking the layers that people are seeing. So I’m thrilled, you couldn’t ask for more."
"Yes, the names were right at the top of the tree, the four Finnegan family members, with a note saying “murdered” on it – “Otahuhu murders 1865” – with the murderer’s name and the date he was hung. Everything else was just standard on that family tree, with little dates, and arrows, no information at all apart from that, so I thought ‘that is rather interesting.’"
"No, not at all. The family tree came to me in a peculiar way – my mother and my father’s second wife are cousins, so their family trees are the same – so it was my father’s second wife who did the tree, and I never got hold of it until she died. Both her and my mother are unfortunately no longer with us, and my brother had the family tree, and I saw it there and swiped it. So I’d never seen it before that – I’d known it existed and I had tried to get it, but was unsuccessful. So I went home and unravelled it, because it was all in this funny little scroll, and it was the first time I saw it. Then I was researching straight away and I thought this would be a short story. The interest wasn’t initially around the family thing, but the story – I wanted to know who these people were and their times. Both James Stack and the Finnegan family were Irish Catholic, so they had come out from different parts of Ireland – one south, one north – and I wanted to know what brought them out here, who they were and what it was like here for them; that really was the basis of my research."
"No, again I sort of stumbled along. I was writing form the perspective of James Stack initially – I had tried writing it from the mother’s point of view, but it didn’t work. So I was halfway through the novel with James Stack, when I discovered the story of the ghost of John Finnegan, and I started looking into that. Then I went to the site and found the old cottage and got talking to an elderly neighbour who had lived there forever, and he was telling me about the ghost, and as the house was abandoned for two years the neighbours would dare it each other to stay overnight to see if the ghost appeared. And this elderly gentleman had done it himself, but he said ‘it was all hoo-ha, he didn’t appear.’ But I kind of felt something while I was there – I really felt this connection to the little boy – it really intrigued me why he was still there. And so I went home and I left the second half of James behind and I wrote John’s section all in one go, and then wove it throughout the story. John became the hero from there. So it was all sort of piecemeal, it all came together as I discovered things."
"Yes, definitely, and you think about all the different branches and stories that must be in your family. I have since discovered that there is Jewish and German heritage as well, and I’m thinking, ‘what other stories are there’? I think it’s really important to know where we’ve come from, because now I can actually identify with my Irish-ness, and I can understand."
"I had the help of a fellow from the Dublin historical society – he was sending me pictures and information and I did a lot my own research – so it wasn’t hard to imagine what it was like."
"It’s all come through stories that I read of the time. The young girl being arrested for stealing a handkerchief and being put on the ship – that was a real twelve year old girl. And the famines, and the cottages being bowled over to make way for new crops and sheep while it was all going over to England – that was all happening at the time. And the same in New Zealand. The character of Abel is a ‘Pakeha Maori’, he didn’t actually exist in the story with James, but my research on Pakeha Maori – I based Abel on one particular fellow – they intrigued me. And this one that I researched in depth actually did become a mediator in the Maori land court in Auckland, and to me that was just too much richness to leave behind. There was a whole parallel going on between the Irish and the Maori, and I wanted this affinity to be shown, and also the different perspectives of these two Irish guys that came out, and the way it changed them and how they reacted to it – perhaps not as you would expect they would. And at the time someone like Abel would have been perceived as being lost, gone off the rails – but he wasn’t. He had that sprit ritual call. And again, while researching that time, the Kingitanga, there was that spiritual call that was much wiser than a lot of the European ways. In the research I also came across one of the men who was in charge of the 65th, and he resigned because he refused to accept the way the Maori were being treated – so that really was there too. There was a lot going on."
"No, and I don’t really think it was like that back then, in the early nineteenth century. I think the two sides at times really did reach out to each other – especially the lower class Europeans."
"Exactly – we can put people inside a box and say ‘your this sort of person for doing this, you’re that sort of person.’ I don’t like that at all, so I think you’re right – there is this whole middle ground that people forget, that we all move between."
"Yes, very much so. I wanted to know what made him do what he did – because there is always a story. Maybe some people are born bad but a lot the time its circumstantial, and I can kind of understand. But in the end we are formed by the choices we make."
"No, I was quite isolated from that part of the family. My mother was an only child and her father died quite young, so there was no contact. My grandmother went on to have many more children to her next marriage, as they did back then, so that was the family. But having said that, there is a relative I have been in contact with recently, just through the novel coming out, and she has described how members of her family were horrified at her delving into this, as they didn’t want the dirty linen brought out. But I haven’t really gone there – the family was much more notorious than I have written, I knew about that."
"Of course they are both Irish Catholics, so they would have had this sense of purgatory, and praying loved ones out of purgatory. But again, there is that whole grey area, and I really wanted to play with that whole idea. I have this quote from Pope John Paul, which says “heaven and hell are primarily eternal states of consciousness, rather than geographical places of later reward or punishment”. I thought that means that in life we are able to put ourselves into a state of purgatory, because it’s a state of consciousness – and therefore the punishment and reward can be cause and effect. I overlaid that on James – he has placed himself inside a state of purgatory and try as he might he just can’t seem to get himself out, whether through his own choices or through circumstances – really it’s a bit of both – and in the end he chooses his ultimate fate. And for John, still being here as a ghost, to me it made sense that he was in a state of purgatory too. Maybe for him it was choice, maybe it was literally that he was anchored to the ground somehow – to the cottage that he was born in. Then I started looking into Maori mythology, and how some return to watch over their mokopuna as birds or trees, and I thought that that was really very beautiful. They have the choice of going home – and with the Irish, home was either going back to your original home, or heaven – whatever that is for you. And so to me, that whole place of purgatory opened up opportunities, rather than being restrictive. And I thought, ‘what if we have a choice?’ We could become the brightest star in the sky so that our family could know that was us, or we could become an owl that comes to visit, or we could go home– they are all beautiful stories – why not choose?"
"Yes, and it’s also that ghostly side – it’s not a scary thing, or death not being a scary thing, it’s just a part of everyday life, that perhaps we are not aware of as much. So to me there were all these openings that I could play with, and explore. For personal reasons too – so I really enjoyed it."
"I didn’t. It was originally called ‘Mother Mary under a Bed of Carrots’ – that was my working title. But my agent thought it was too whimsical, and he gave it the title ‘Purgatory’, which I struggled with for quite some time – because it was so serious, and scary, and a bit daring – but I absolutely love it now, absolutely couldn’t imagine another title – so thank you Michael!"
"You do become quite ritualistic as a writer, and very precious about your time. Because I have no office in our house I write from my bed – so it’s a crazy little set up – I have my bed and my shelves all around me and I get up very early, kick my husband out, feed the dog, then I come straight back to bed before doing anything. I close the blinds, shut the door so it’s a darkened room, and I find that helps me focus because if it’s a beautiful day, or the wind is blowing its very distracting. So the dog usually snuggles next to me and I do this sort of head clearing thing, which seems to be a necessity, which I never realised I was doing until half way through the book when I was sort of breathing and feeling something starting to percolate – and then I would start. And I would start by reading what I had written the day before, and maybe editing. And there is always this push into the new prose – I don’t know if other writers feel that, but I actually sort of have to kick myself up the bum and say ‘go!’ It’s almost like you have to be brave and say ‘just go!’ and then you’re off."
"I just write and then I go back – and I am hideously painful at going back and back and back, and then I give it to my husband to read, and he will go “hmmm” and so then I go back again. But initially I just let it out. And I cut big sections out, where you’ve just ‘walked into the forest to pick daisies’ – after a while you become more disciplined at seeing those parts and chopping them out. Then when I’m done I feel great – there is no other feeling that equates to that."
"Yes, I have a few favourites. Tim Winton is a favourite; I just love the way his language is so beautiful and the way he crosses that line too into magical realism, where you are in this normal place and this strangeness will waft in, whether it’s a ghost or whatever – I have much respect for that. At the time I also read Hamish Clayton’s Wulf and that inspired me a great deal – again the language and the story – I found him to be extraordinary. And I’ve always loved Janette Frame, and she does similar things. At university I tended to lean more towards sort of gothic novels, so it will be interesting to see what my next one is like. I’m not planning it to be dark or scary in any way, but definitely explorative – just see where it takes me. It’ll be interesting to see whether this dark, slightly gothic thing is me – I’m not sure. Maybe it was just this novel."
"Apparently we Kiwis are really bad at that, not sticking to genre! We must have a real creative freedom – I like it."
"Yes, I have a story pretty much mapped out, but again they change as you are writing it. It’s centred around another murder that I know of, and that I’m quite intrigued with, and its more contemporary. So it think possibly I will explore contemporary issues through it – I’m quite looking forward to it."
"Back to the bedroom, very soon! As soon as all this settles I will be incognito again – for the next two years!"
"It's a strenuous job every day of your life to live up to the way you look on the screen."
"I guess I became an actress because I didn't want to be myself."
"I am not an adult, that's my explanation of myself. Except when I am working on a set, I have all the inhibitions and shyness of the bashful, backward child . . . unless I have something very much in common with a person, I am lost. I am swallowed up in my own silence."
"The fact that I did not marry George Bernard Shaw is the only real disappointment I've had."
"[on Hollywood] I hated the place - not the work, but the lack of privacy, those terrible prying fan magazine writers and all the surrounding exploitation."
"If people don't like your work, all the still pictures in the world can't help you and nothing written about you, even oceans of it, will make you popular."
"(on doing interviews) Quite frankly, I'd rather have my throat slit."
"I bumped into every kind of disappointment, and was frustrated at every turn. Roles promised me were given to other players, pictures that offered me a chance were shelved, no one was particularly interested in me, and I had not developed a strength of personality to make anyone believe I had special talents. I wanted so desperately to succeed that I drove myself relentlessly, taking no time off for pleasures, or for friendships - yet aiming at the stars, I was still floundering."
"First I played ingénues and western heroines; then I played western heroines and ingénues. That diet of roles became as monotonous as a diet of spinach. The studio wouldn't trust me with any other kind of role, because I had no experience in any other kind. And I didn't see how I was ever going to acquire any other experience if I couldn't get any other kind of role. It was a vicious circle."
"It's hardly fair for women to do the same things at the same hours every day of their lives, while men have new experiences, meet new people every day. I felt that way as a little girl, with two older brothers around the house. It seemed to me that they led adventurous lives, compared with mine. I felt cheated and frustrated. I became a tomboy in self-defense. I decided that I was going to do things that were exciting, or at least interesting."
"[speaking in in the 1930s] I've never had a single close intimate girlfriend in all my life. I never had a chum to whom I could confide my secrets. I suppose that accounts for the fact that now it is so painfully difficult for me to open my heart and confide in people who are, so often, almost strangers. You have to learn so very young to open your heart."
"[on her early acting days] My very "naturalness" was my undoing. I had to learn that to appear natural on the screen requires a vast amount of training, that is the test of an actor's art. It would be more spectacular if I could say that out of the hurt and humiliation of that failure was born a determination to success, to prove I had the makings of an actress. But it wouldn't be true. That urge came later."
"[on her first marriage, which only lasted a day] Julian [Julian Anker] looked a lot like Abraham Lincoln, and that's probably why I fell in love with him. One day we were out driving and he suddenly said, "Hey, why don't we get married?" So we lied about our ages and got married in a sheriff's office. You should have heard our families' reactions - all sorts of screaming and shouting and carrying on about suicide. Well, neither Julian nor I had enough income to make it possible for us to live together, so our marriage lasted one day."
"[on making Only Angels Have Wings (1939)] I loved sinking my head into Cary Grant's chest."
"[1977 comment on Gary Cooper] I loved working with Gary Cooper. Gary was my favorite. He was so terrific-looking, and so easy to work with."
"[on director George Stevens] George Stevens started out as a cameraman with Laurel and Hardy, and he learned so many wonderful tricks, like having us walk forward while looking backward and then bumping into something. George was a darling man, so great with comedy. It's too bad he got serious."
"[In 1940] Those two and a half years on Broadway were the happiest years of my life. I loved the stage. I think every girl who wants to become an actress should put in some years on the stage."
"[About her first marriage] There was nothing tragic about it - it was a case of willfulness."
"I wanted to become a really accomplished actress, but I didn't know how to act, and had no chance to learn. In those days the studios didn't have coaches or drama schools and it was almost impossible to get on the sets to watch the older players. I finally decided there was only one thing to do: go back to New York and try to get into some plays there."
"[About her early career] I was all right in long shots, but when it came to close-ups, sustained emotion was beyond me. I knew nothing about acting and often wondered why I had not continued with my plan to become a teacher of modern languages."
"[While she was a model] Someone in the studio noticed me sitting in the background. They asked me whether I would pose for girls' hats, and with some diffidence I consented. My first posing was terribly self-conscious. The photographer liked my type, and employed me steadily that summer. I got $5 an hour and sometimes had five or six sittings in a day."
"You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself. Wise enough to be brave enough, to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are.”"
"So often I have said in the past, when a war is over, the statesmen should not go into conference one with another, but should turn their attention to the infant rooms, since it is from there that comes peace or war.”"
"the more violent the boy, the more I see that he creates, and when he kicks the others with his big boots, treads on fingers on the mat, hits another over the head with a piece of wood or throws a stone, I put clay in his hands, or chalk. He can create bombs if he likes or draw my house in flame, but it is the creative vent that is widening all the time and the destructive one atrophying, however much it may look to the contrary. And anyway I have always been more afraid of the weapon unspoken than of the one on the blackboard"
"Sorry guys, the thing is, when I write a poem I become a werewolf."
"My views become exactly the same as “those expressed in Germany”. What I mean is, I’m the whole of Nazism and the entire Second World War."
"When I write a poem “sexual and racial violence” burst out of me like wolf-fur through the rents in my smooth brown skin. I start howling at the moon and “inciting racial violence” all over the place."
"My daughter locks me in the bathroom and says through the door: Mum, stop that “racist violence dressed up as art”, because, Mum, “poor white people disaffected by the effects of globalism” couldn’t say those things."
"My daughter slumps down outside the bathroom door in tears and whispers: I’m tired of my “acceptable ethnicity”. We brown people have all the privileges now. We can say anything we like and get away with it."
"When I am under a full moon, I start writing a poem about colonisation, which is exactly the same as “inciting murder”. Writing a poem is the same as a “manifesto” justifying terrorism and massacre."
"Now, I’m howling and ripping off my clothes and writing a poem which is “inciting violence” right through the walls of my house."
"The neighbours hear me writing a poem about colonisation and they yell: Stop that “race-baiting”, our kids are trying to sleep."
"Later, my white neighbour will come over to my house and say: Let me explain something to you, Tusiata. “Racism is like a scab on your knee”, and “if you pick it”, what will happen? “Leave it alone and it will heal”, otherwise I fear the “wound will get infected”. And what will happen to me then? Huh? What will happen to me then?"
"When I write a poem it turns into a “hate crime” right then and there. It springs up off the page, and marches out into the street like an army of ten thousand colonial soldiers armed with guns."
"My poem steals my neighbour’s land, and everybody’s land. My poem steals 94 percent of all the land in New Zealand. It steals millions upon millions of acres of land."
"My poem kidnaps children, puts them in state welfare institutions, abuses them and stops them speaking their own language."
"In the space of a few generations, my poem has traumatised the people who originally owned this land and their language almost disappears."
"My poem is no accident. My poem does all these things on purpose. My poem has a plan to take over everyone and everything."
"When I write a poem, my “moral compass is marginal” at best and the consequences of my poem “devastate” innocent people all over the country. Look at my poem, causing the “radicalisation of people” and ruining “social cohesion”."
"Oh no! Here I go again, with my pen and my exercise book, inciting “hate speech” and “dehumanising” people."
"Now, I want you to listen closely because I’m going to tell you something very important: Brown women are so privileged now, we can get away with anything. If I was a “white male I would be taken apart!”."
"That’s honestly how simple it is."
"It is not complex."
"No colonisation. No genocide. No intergenerational trauma. No two centuries of white privilege."
"There is truly nothing more to think about."
"Damn this poem! It is making my jaw grow long and shaggy, fangs grow from my mouth and my eyes turn red. Here I go, on all fours now, with a tail growing out from under my skirt like a wild dog. Here I go, writing a “racist rant about one of history’s greatest explorers”."
"“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own significance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you."
"Books are escape hatches from conventional temporality. They are portals. Flight co-ordinates to elsewhere. The best thing about reading is turning pages to unlock minds and worlds. Reading takes me on journeys where I encounter the familiar and the unimaginable. It transports me beyond my geographical location, but can also ground me in my neighbourhood"
"I’m not a proponent of the Dewey Classification system. It was created in the 1870s and is based on a system that classifies knowledge according to Western perspectives and cultural bias. It doesn’t accommodate interdisciplinary subjects or emerging fields. What I consider nonfiction might be shelved in the fiction section of a library. I just enjoy books"
"Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,"
"‘The plant, when established’ . . Oh, become established quickly, *quickly, garden For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive – – –"
"Those that come after me will gather these roses, And watch, as I do *now, the white wistaria Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath."
"Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected, Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,And say ‘One might build here, the view is glorious;This must have been a pretty garden once.’"
"I want to take you to the river that runs behind my house"
"There is such a narrow window"
"Often I look at the world"
"It’s like falling in love for the first time for the last time"
"The past is a bad invention that keeps on happening:"
"Keats is dead so fuck me from behind"
"I enjoy words that sparkle, whether they be in Māori, my mother tongue, or English. What a privilege it is to inherit and to appreciate a language, and to enjoy another equally."
"So far it has worked by imagining you in all the places I would like you to be"
"this is the one I love.he is not here but the air is still warm from where he might have been"
"we have spent hours circling each other with words-thinly vowelled embraces"
"how to translate these words into silences or the silences into words"
"when I cannot fix you behind my eyes I carry your absence like stars on the blue roof."
"My poems don't start from ideas, but from bits of language, maybe a turn of phrase that's like a tune that plays over and over in my mind. A poem can often be like a game in my head where I want to think about something I don't fully understand. Recently a child said to me, 'I'm not me. I'm someone else. I'm very strong. I'm Richie McCaw.' It's easy when you're four years old to play this sort of game. Writing is one way that as an adult I can take on a different persona. Some of these poems may suggest I live in rest home and that I have won the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship and lived in Menton. I did once spend a happy weekend in Paris, but I've never been to Menton and I have never won the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship. That doesn't stop me wondering what it would be like to be selected for a magnificent prize and live in a remote city. I also wonder what it may be like one day to live in a rest home.'"
"I don’t have a favourite genre. I try to ready widely."
"There’s almost always a book of poems that I’m reading and I keep it by my bed or in my handbag if the book is skinny enough. At present I am still reading Essential New Zealand Poems and I am also reading Horse with Hat by Marty Smith. I’ve also read some of Milton’s poetry, particular a verse drama called Samson Agonistes that for some reason I never got round to reading when I studied Milton as a university student. (Paula — these books aren’t children’s books in case you think they are."
"I’m reading a novel too – it’s called Concluding by Henry Green. It first came out when I was 6 years old but of course I didn’t know anything about him then. He was talked about a bit when I was at university but was never in any of the English papers I did."
"If you want to write in a particular genre it’s likely you’ll read that genre. At the same time I sometimes find that the books that really get me writing are a surprise. It’s not necessarily books of modern poetry that make me want to write poems."
"I don’t often feel inspired. I try to keep writing and sometimes something unexpected happens and I find I’m writing more easily and confidently than usual. It’s wonderful when that happens."
"Things that make me want to write vary."
"What I read is often helpful. Sometimes first lines of very good writers make me want to write my own poem almost as a response to theirs. Janet Frame and Anne Carson have done that for me."
"Sometimes being under a particular pressure makes me write easily. Which seems strange. Pressure might be a time constraint, like to write something in 20 minutes. Or it might be a set of ‘rules’, like ‘Write a poem that consists entirely of untrue statements’. I think the hardest thing to do is probably to be told to take as long as you need to write the best poem you possibly can about whatever you think is important. If there are constraints you can always blame them if your poem isn’t as terrific as you would have liked it to be."
"Walking helps me to write. I’m pretty sure Fiona Farrell has written about how how walking helps her to write."
"Yes, I almost always do this."
"I mentioned earlier that I always have a notebook. Usually this is where I draft poems and then maybe weeks later I read back over this notebook. Some things I’ve written look a bit feeble but often there’s something I can use and develop further."
"After a gap of time, I can often look at a poem a bit more objectively and see what needs doing to it. I would hardly ever send a poem I’ve just written away to a literary magazine because I am so likely to see things I want to change if I look at it after a few weeks"
"Yes, I suppose sometimes I do feel the opposite from inspired and can’t think how to begin or continue anything."
"Sometimes I find that to think of it as being like having a bit of a headache is useful. Okay, it’s there, and I can either retire to bed feeling sorry for myself or just go on doing what I do as best I can. But if I decide I am suffering from Writer’s Block and stop writing then there is no chance of my writing well."
"Michael Harlow once said at a workshop that if you write a word another flies to it. That’s mostly true for me. So if I can find a word or a phrase from anywhere and write it down then there is a chance some writing will happen. It may not be very good, but at least its writing."
"If I was feeling flat about my writing, I used to return to a book called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and it helped me to forgive myself for often writing rubbishy, dull stuff. (And it also has some really good suggestions, about daily writing practice that I found useful.)"
"I don’t think I can answer this very well. There’s no single thing that is particularly hard for me."
"I have learned to accept that alternating between thinking I have just written a Truly Terrific Poem and thinking that I am an Embarrassing Disaster of a Writer who will never manage an even halfway decent poem doesn’t help me at all. I’m gradually realising that nothing I write will change the world and knock its little cotton socks off, but also I’ve come to realise that there’s no need to be ashamed of what I write."
"Just keeping going, I guess, is hard. There are lots of other wonderful things to do. How do you balance these different aspects of your life? I’m busy, as most people are busy. I don’t write as much as I would like to write. I also need to work on regularly finishing poems and sending them away to literary magazines."
"Sometimes writing can seem a bit lonely. But having a group of people you trust and with whom you can share your writing helps."
"Nobody has to be a writer. But when it’s going well it’s good fun and satisfying."