Hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk. (p71) - Keri Hulme

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. (p94)

Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth.... (p249)

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. (p4)