N. Scott Momaday Quotes

And Mariano fell and was exhausted. Fransisco held his stride all the way... and even then he could have gone on running, for no reason, for only the sake of running on.

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.

In school Set was taught that art was resistance. . . . Water follows the line of least resistance. . . . It has shaped some of the most impressive forms on the face of the earth.

Imagine: somewhere in the prehistoric distance a man holds up in his hand a crude instrument— ...like a daub or a broom bearing pigment—and fixes the wonderful image in his mind's eye to a wall or a rock. In that instant is accomplished... the advent of art. ...in the long reach of time he is utterly without distinction, except: he draws. ...all the stories of the world proceed from the moment in which he makes his mark. All literatures issue from his hand.

The dullimer is... one of two known to exist, the second... unearthed... at Coatepec in 1958... Mine is... the better example of the armorer's art, especially with respect to the amulet, a leather bracelet to which the dullimer can be affixed and... activated with remarkable dispatch... used, according to oral tradition, to fell even the great beasts of the jungle. ...[O]ne day I laid the dullimer to rest once and for all. I had a dream in which it seemed to me that I could decipher the ancient markings on the amulet:
I, Chopetl, am grown weary of war;
I have been deadly even to the gods.

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

My Grandmother was a Storyteller;
She knew her way around Words.
She never learned to read and write, but somehow
She knew the good of reading and writing;
She had learned how to Listen and Delight.
She had learned that in Words and in Language,
and there only,
She could have whole and consummate Being.
You see for Her, 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, and
She never threw Words away.
She told me Stories and
She taught me how to Listen.
I was a Child, and I Listened.

In western I was shown articles of the bear fest... In the presence of these things I felt their power. In their presence I understood something about Bear's transcendent spirit, how... Bear dances on the edge of life and death, crossing over and back again.

He wondered what his sorrow was and could not remember.

Consider this ritual formula from the : ...
My voice thou restore for me.
Restore all for me in beauty.
Make beautiful all that is before me.
Make beautiful all that is behind me.
It is done in beauty...
...the achieves a remarkable stability, an authority not unlike that of Scripture.

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

Sampt'e drew the string back until he felt the bow wobble... and he let it go. It shot across the long light of the morning and struck the black face of a stone... glanced then away... limping... then it settled down in the grass and lay still. ...he believed that the arrow might take flight again, so much of his life did he give into it.

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. By means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. And the word is sacred. A man's name is his own; he can keep it or give it away as he likes.

There is no love without loss. I hear the drums that vibrate to the heartbeat of the earth. They set me dancing. I see the clouds that wreathe the summits. They set me dreaming. I know the wonder of waves that shake the headlands. They awaken my soul. I hear the screams of eagles on the wind. And I ponder, what are these things to me who loves and does not reckon loss? Do I not keep the earth?

In the winter dusk I heard coyotes barking away by the river, the sound of the drums in the , and the voice of the village crier, ringing at the rooftops.