The Prologue quotations below are checked word for word against the publisher's own sample of the Puffin edition (2024). No complete copy of the later chapters could be consulted for this guide, so a quotation from them is included only where a published source prints it as part of a passage from the novel, and nearly all of them are printed the same way by two or more sources. Editions of the novel differ in places: some use Maori words where others use English ones, so in Koro's Chapter 16 speech one edition calls the whale the pito joining past and present, and another the birth cord. Where the sources disagree, only the words they share are quoted. The novel prints Maori without the macron, and the quotations keep its spelling; this guide uses Māori in its own words. Page numbers differ between editions, so find each line in your own copy by its part and chapter before you learn it.
“the land and sea felt a great emptiness, a yearning”
The storyteller, Prologue, Chapter 1 (the opening sentence)
The novel's first image personifies land and sea as lonely, waiting for people to complete them. “Yearning” is a word of desire rather than need, so the natural world is given feelings before any human appears. That sets the ideal the whole novel measures itself against: people and nature belonging to each other. Everything Koro later mourns, and everything Kahu restores, is defined by this opening.
“You have called and I have come”
The song that fills the sea as the whale rises, Prologue, Chapter 1
The whale's arrival is framed as an answer to the land's yearning, and call and response becomes a pattern of the novel. The rider then cries “Karanga mai” to the land; in Winter the ancient whale rises singing the same call, and Kahu answers by singing it back to him as she swims out. The simple, balanced clause sounds like ritual, which tells the reader that the bond between people and whales is a covenant, not an accident.
“a swirling moko pattern imprinted on the forehead”
The storyteller, describing the whale, Prologue, Chapter 1
A moko is a Māori tattoo design, so the whale carries the same sacred marking as a person of rank. The detail is also planted for later: when the ancient whale rises off Whangara in Winter, it is the sacred sign on his head that tells Koro this is no ordinary whale. The mark joins the legend to the present and makes the whale an ancestor as well as an animal.
“Let this be the one to flower when the people are troubled”
The whale rider's prayer over the last spear, Prologue, Chapter 1
The last spear will not leave the rider's hand, so he sends it into the future with a prayer. The metaphor of a spear that will “flower” turns a weapon into a seed, which is exactly what Kahu becomes. The whole plot is a working-out of this prophecy, and in the Epilogue the bull whale understands that she is the last spear. Readers know from the first chapter that rescue is coming; the question is who will carry it.
“you old paka”
Nanny Flowers, calling to Koro Apirana, Spring, Chapter 3
Rawiri explains that this was the affectionate name Nanny used when she wanted Koro to know she loved him, even in the middle of a row. The comic insult captures their marriage: argument on the surface, loyalty underneath. Kahu takes up the name and calls him Paka throughout, and Nanny is still using it at his expense in the hospital in the Epilogue, so the phrase frames the whole family story.
“No matter where you may go, you will always return”
Nanny Flowers, to the baby Kahu, Summer, Chapter 6
As Kahu is taken away to be raised by her mother's family, Nanny promises that the buried birth cord will bring her back. The balanced clauses sound like a blessing, and the future tense turns a custom into a prophecy. It links the tradition Koro refused to honour to Kahu's destiny, and it is fulfilled twice: when she comes to live in Whangara, and when the whales return her from the sea.
“Our Koro was like an old whale stranded in an alien present”
Rawiri, reflecting on Porourangi's worries about the future, Autumn, Chapter 11
Rawiri, far from home, uses a simile that ties Koro to the ancient bull whale. “Stranded” suggests helplessness rather than villainy, and “alien present” makes the modern world the strange place, not Koro. The image also foreshadows the literal strandings of Winter. It is a key quotation for any question on Koro, because it lets you argue that the novel judges him with sympathy.
“I was still too dark”
Rawiri, of Jeff's mother Clara, Autumn, Chapter 11
The short, flat sentence carries a great deal: although Jeff has told his mother that Rawiri is Māori, she sees only his skin. The word “still” shows that no explanation can change her mind. Ihimaera widens the novel here from one family's prejudice about gender to colonial racism, and the humiliation helps send Rawiri home to the identity that Whangara offers him.
“It's not Paka's fault, Nanny”
Kahu, to Nanny Flowers, after her school ceremony, Autumn, Chapter 12
Koro has left his reserved seat empty, and Kahu goes on to say that it is not his fault “that I'm a girl”. A small child blames herself to protect the man who has hurt her, which makes the reader angrier with Koro than any accusation could. The affectionate “Paka” shows that her love has not changed, and the line exposes how completely she has absorbed his view of girls.
“This is a sign to us”
Koro Apirana, after seeing the dead whales on the beach, Winter, Chapter 16
Home from the South Island, Koro stops to see the dead herd and then says, again, that the stranding is a message rather than an accident. The plain declarative sentence shows his certainty, and “us” makes the whole people responsible. It prepares for his claim that the ancient whale's fate and the tribe's are one: if the whale lives, the people live. The novel invites readers to share his reading, not to smile at it.
“drive a wedge through the original oneness of the world”
Koro Apirana, to the men in the meeting house, Winter, Chapter 16
Addressing the men before they try to save the ancient whale, Koro says that man, growing arrogant, split the world apart. The metaphor of a wedge is violent and deliberate, forcing a crack into something whole. “Original oneness” looks back to the Prologue's picture of land, sea and people belonging together. Ironically, Koro's own rule about male heirs is another wedge, dividing his family, and the novel's resolution mends both.
“if we have forgotten the communion then we have ceased to be Maori”
Koro Apirana, to the men arguing over whether the whale is natural or supernatural, Winter, Chapter 16
When the men argue over whether the whale is natural or supernatural, Koro insists it is both. “Communion” is a religious word, making the bond between people and whales sacred rather than sentimental. The conditional structure raises the stakes to identity itself: to lose the bond is to stop being Māori. Here Koro is right, and the novel lets his wisdom stand even while it shows his blindness about Kahu.
“The rain was like spears”
Rawiri, in the storm of the ancient whale's night, Winter, Chapter 17
The simile makes the storm violent, but it also links the scene to the legend of the whale rider's spears. In the chapter in which Kahu goes out to the whale, the weather itself seems to be throwing spears, and the reader is reminded that she is the last one. A small image does structural work, turning a realistic storm into the fulfilment of a myth told in Chapter 1.
“not afraid to die”
Kahu, whispering to herself on the whale's back before the longest dive, Winter, Chapter 18
After dives that grow deeper each time, Kahu realises the next may last forever and tells herself she is not afraid. Study sources print the start of her sentence differently, so learn these words. They show that her destiny is also her choice, and they give her, in the plainest language, the self-sacrifice Koro wanted from a leader, in the one person he refused to consider.
“the bull whale began to lose his nostalgia for the past”
The whale narrative, Epilogue, Chapter 19
Persuaded by the old mother whale, the bull whale stops clinging to his memory of Kahutia Te Rangi and turns his thoughts to the present and the future. “Nostalgia” names the fault he shares with Koro: love for the past that endangers the living. Because the whale changes first, and saves Kahu by doing so, the novel shows Koro the change he still has to make.
“where the afterbirth of a female child would be placed”
The bull whale's memory of the last spear, Epilogue, Chapter 19
The Epilogue retells the Prologue's legend with one new detail: the spear came to rest where a girl's afterbirth would one day be buried. The buried birth cord of Spring becomes the landing place of the ancestor's gift. “Female child” is placed exactly where Koro expected a male heir, so the myth itself is shown to have chosen Kahu, and his rule is proved wrong by his own tradition.
“the girl would need to be carefully taught”
The whale herd, rejoicing that the tribe will live, Epilogue, Chapter 20
The whales sing their gladness that the tribe will live, because they know Kahu must be taught before she can take her place. The line keeps the novel's ending honest: Kahu's gift does not make Koro's knowledge unnecessary, it makes him her teacher. It supports the reading that Ihimaera reconciles tradition and change rather than choosing between them, and it looks beyond the last page.
“Boy or girl, it doesn't matter”
Koro Apirana, to Kahu in hospital, Epilogue, Chapter 21
Kahu wakes and apologises for falling off the whale, saying a boy would have held on. Koro, crying, tells her she is the best great-grandchild in the world and that boy or girl does not matter. The short, balanced phrase undoes the rule he has held since Chapter 3, and its plainness matters: after a novel of chants and prophecies, the reconciliation is spoken in the simplest words.
“the whales are still singing”
Kahu, to Koro Apirana, just before the closing chant, Epilogue, Chapter 21
In the novel's last words of dialogue, Kahu asks whether Koro can hear the whales and tells him she has been listening to them for ages. The present continuous “are still singing” makes the bond between people and whales ongoing rather than a memory. It also invites a rereading: every time the child called out to the sea, she may have been hearing the herd whose chapters we have been reading.