Quotes from N. Scott Momaday

We perceive existence by means of words and names. To this or that vague, potential thing I will give a name, and it will exist thereafter, and its existence will be clearly perceived. The name enables me to see it. I can call it by its name, and I can see it for what it is.

There was a man who killed a buffalo bull to no purpose, only he wanted the blood on his hands.

It's a matter of honor, death. It's your white page, do you see? Or your shame. Either you're worthy of it or you ain't. To accept it, to face it with honor and respect and goodwill, to earn it, that is to be brave.

He used both hands when he made the bear. Imagine a bear proceeding from the hands of God.

The events of one's life take place, take place. How often have I used this expression, and how often have I stopped to think about what it means? Events do indeed take place, they have meaning in relation to things around them.

You see, I am alive, I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth I stand in good relation to the gods I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte You see, I am alive, I am alive

If coupling should but make us whole / And of the selfsame mind and soul, / Then couple let's in celebration; / We have contained the population.

Abel,' she said after a moment, 'do you think that I am beautiful?' She had gone to the opposite wall and turned. She leaned back with her hands behind her, throwing her head a little in order to replace a lock of hair that had fallen across her brow. She sucked at her cheeks, musing. 'No, not beautiful,' he said.

There was a time when "man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent," this New World, "commensurate to his capacity for wonder." I would strive with all my strength to give that sense of wonder to those who will come after me.

The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian person in one way or another.

I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.

Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which is very serious. That balance is very hard to strike. But it can be done.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'

Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.

Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.

María Delgado confesses 9 mortal & 32 venial sins! & wonders exceedingly at the 9 as if they had been miracles.

Sill. Their horses and weapons were confiscated, and they were imprisoned. In a field just

When we dance the earth trembles. When our steps fall on the earth we feel the shudder of life beneath us, and the earth feels the beating of our hearts, and we become one with the earth. We shall not sever ourselves from the earth. We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth.

She was not listening at the level of language but beneath it, in the deep recesses of the imagination.

And the simple act of listening is crucial to the concept of language, more crucial even than reading and writing, and language in turn is crucial to human society.