Quotes About Legacy

Within a few generations we had gone from being nearly one hundred percent of the population of this continent to less than one-half of one percent. We were all haunted.

I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz.

We must take care to feed the minds, hearts, and spirits of those coming up behind us--to offer songs, poems, and stories that will break open that which is hardened, expose that which is evil-minded or would harm, and remind us how we are constructed to bring forth beauty of thought and beingness.

I grow tired of the heartache Of every small and large war Passed from generation To generation. But it is not in me to give up. I was taught to give honor to the house of the warriors Which cannot exist without the house of the peacemakers.

Our knowledge is based on the origin stories of land, genealogy and ancestors. If you know the branches of the tree of relationship between tribal clans and family members, then you know who you are, said the panther to its cubs.

You were born of a generation that promised to help remember.

I've learned there are many genealogies. Within our family is a genealogy of rage. There is also a genealogy of justice. I would show you a map, but I am still searching the roadway for casualties.

The pervasive rhythm of her mother's heartbeat is a ghostly track that follows her.

You savored each story they told you, and remembered the way the stars entered your blood at birth.

Because we are linked by blood and blood is memory without language.

whatever you do, with whom you do it or whether you do it alone, and when, and how, and why, to what mysterious end—it's balanced against nothing, against Death and forgetting. You balanced against oblivion.

It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me -- will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you.

Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.

For The Accursed is intended as a work of inquiring moral complexity, and not a "sensationalist" rehashing of an old, dread scandal far better left to molder in the grave!

I wasn't so special, honey. Except that I was your dad, I wasn't so special.

It was the fate of mothers, to remember. What nobody else would know or care about. That, when they are gone, goes with them.

Being a young man confirmed in the Presbyterian faith, in the very bedrock of Protestant Christian faith, Josiah understands that his behavior is reckless, and dangerous; it is surely not Christian. Yet, his Slade and Strachan ancestors would cheer for him, if they knew.

Nobody on their death bed ever worried about their bank balance.

therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

what are you going to do with all this life

Nadie te hará daño nunca, hijo. Estoy aquí para protegerte. Por eso nací antes que tú y mis huesos se endurecieron primero que los tuyos.

Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo ...

You know that what makes us extraordinary can sometimes make us dangerous. Your ancestors are proof of that. It is your job to learn from their mistakes as well as their triumphs. Isn't that true?

Katherine wouldn't lead all her descendants here for chervil, would she?