Linda Hogan Quotes

The people, are watching Ama, studying her. She’s a curiosity. She is a human being of a different kind. She makes them doubt, I see that. (p134)

I loved poetry. I still do. I love the process of writing it, the very sort of quiet way of being in the world. I think it's more about being than it is about thinking, and I like that...I think the poetry is a basic language for writing, the most condensed, every word cared about. It's preparation for all the other shapes and kinds of writing.

Like the water, the earth, the universe, a story is forever unfolding. It floods and erupts. It births new worlds. It is circular as our planet and fluid as the words of the first people who came out from the ocean or out of the cave or down from the sky. Or those who came from a garden where rivers meet and whose god was a tempter to their fall, planning it into their creation along with all the rest. (p288)

Once a people are victims, they have to struggle hard to politicize themselves and to be able to break the cycle, to be able to somehow, as they say today, to empower themselves once again, to get back their health and their wholeness.

Change was in the air. It was palpable, a strong presence in the room. (chapter three, p51)

Mystery is part of each life, and maybe it is healthier to uphold it than to spend a lifetime in search of half-made answers. Still, as humans, we want truth. We are searchers. Our stories, our courthouses, our lives, contemporary anxieties and depressions are all searches full with this desire. Humans want truth the way water desires to be sea level and moves across the continent for the greater ocean. "Memory is a field full of psychological ruins," wrote French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. For some that may be true, but memory is also a field of healing that has the capacity to restore the world, not only for the one person who recollects, but for cultures as well. When a person says "I remember," all things are possible. (p 15)

I was told Ammah was a silent god and rarely spoke. The reason for this was that all things--birdsongs, the moon, even my own life--grow from rich and splendid silence. (p265)

It has been my lifelong work to seek an understanding of the two views of the world, one as seen by native people and the other as seen by those who are new and young on this continent. It is clear that we have strayed from the treaties we once had with the land and with the animals. It is also clear, and heartening, that in our time there are many-Indian and non-Indian alike-who want to restore and honor these broken agreements. (Preface)

it has always been Ama’s skill to live with the world and not against it. (p47)

I feel watched. By nature. I think now. It’s what I felt watching me, all along. It knows us. It watches us. The animals have eyes that see us. The birds, the trees, everything knows what we do. (p59)

"The law is on their side because it's their law." (p111)

Home was always, in my heart, Oklahoma. I can feel even now the stillness of the land, the smell of it. But I've lived a long time in Colorado, so I believe it is home too. Especially since I know the stories there, the land, the animals, and the people in our community. But I am thinking that home is larger than this. As the earth has grown smaller and we know its fragility, it is important for us now to expand our view of home to a larger space, a global community, and to think of land, ocean, mountains, desert, as home. And we need to extend our sense of community to include animals and other forms of life.

it is only recently, in earth time, that the severing of the connections between people and land have taken place. Something in our human blood is still searching for it, still listening, still remembering. ("Creations" p83)

I used to tell students that whatever is inside the psyche will come to the fore in poetry and writing and not to think too much about wanting to say something, about wanting a theme. It is already there. Given the chance, words will come with their own will. A poem knows what it wants to do even without the mind of the writer intervening. Writers can’t create it on their own behalf and make it right. It is more like putting together a basket. The shape happens as the maker weaves...That is my key way of knowing; It Comes to Me.

I feel the air as if I could move through it with my ancestors' wings. (p 202)