Quotes About Resilience

Loss Statement from a major local

There's something about these obscure vignettes of former lives that's very powerful. Our woods are full of old cellar holes, tumbled-down chimneys, ancient scraggly lilacs absurdly tall still stretching toward the light.

It took a great deal of energy to be a human being, and the more the wind blew and the sun moved southwest, the less energy Tayo had.

As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on.

This feeling was their life, vitality locked deep in blood memory, and the people were strong, and the fifth world endured, and nothing was ever lost as long as the love remained.

She taught me this above all else: things which don't shift and grow are dead things. They are things the witchery people want. Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth. But it has always been necessary, and more than ever now, it is. Otherwise we won't make it. We won't survive. That's what the witchery is counting on: that we will cling to the ceremonies the way they were, and then their power will triumph, and the people will be no more.

He was standing with the wind at his back, like that mule, and he felt he could stand there indefinitely, maybe forever, like a fence post or a tree. It took a great deal of energy to be a human being, and the more the wind blew and the sun moved southwest, the less energy Tayo had.

Their mouths were wet and soured with beer, and when they pushed themselves down on her, they felt small and soft between her thighs. She stared at the stains on the ceiling, and waited until they gave up or fell asleep, and then she rolled out from under them.

She didn't like the looks of the Indian women she saw in Gallup, dancing at Eddie's club with the drunks that stumbled around the floor with them. Their hair was dirty and straight. They'd shaved off their eyebrows, but the hairs were growing back and they didn't bother to pencil them any more. Their blouses had buttons missing and were fastened with safety pins. Their western pants were splitting out at the seams; there were stains around the crotch.

But there was something else now, as Betonie said: it was everything they had seen—the cities, the tall buildings, the noise and the lights, the power of their weapons and machines. They were never the same after that: they had seen what the white people had made from the stolen land.

Indian Song: Survival We went north to escape winter climbing pale cliffs we paused to sleep at the river. Cold water river cold from the north I sink my body in the shallow sink into sand and cold river water. …Mountain forest wind travels east and I answer: taste me, I am the wind touch me, I am the lean gray deer running on the edge of the rainbow.

I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.

He had to keep busy; he had to keep moving so that the sinews connected behind his eyes did not slip loose and spin his eyes to the interior of his skull where the scenes waited for him.

The dead don't give up anything, but the living do.

I'm a mother. You name it, I've seen it and probably had to mop it up," said Lucy.

Even evils are transitory. So where to battle?

Sapped of strength, I discover a self that doesn't rely on strength.

Suffering toughens the spirit and tenderizes the soul.

The unbalanced are more at home with life's twists and turns.

They say weight training is good for you and helps you be healthier. Not hard to do, given the older I get, the more years I carry.

We are concentrates, charged with the task in life of avoiding dilution.

I am so sorry for you, Leslie.' She said it like she really meant it. But not like she was completely surprised. 'And for him. Because he's lost you now.' This last part undid me. Despite her cruel criticism of me over the years, from where she sat, I was anyone and everyone's prize.

Joy expressed during a tragedy is, in a way, it's own protest. (In reference to not cancelling the Tony Awards becsuse of the Orlando shootings)

Every truth bends and reshapes itself or is reshaped by other forces.