N. Scott Momaday Quotes

Kiowa author and academic (1934–2024)

N. Scott Momaday (February 27, 1934 – January 24, 2024) was a Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and is considered the first major work of the Native American Renaissance. His follow-up work The Way to Rainy Mountain blended folklore with memoir. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work's celebration and preservation of indigenous oral and art traditions. He held twenty honorary degrees from colleges and universities and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Birth Name: Navarre Scott Momaday

Alternative Names: Navarre Scott Mammedaty • Tsoai-talee • Rock Tree Boy

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I have walked in a mountain meadow bright with Indian paintbrush, lupine, and wild buckwheat, and I have seen high in the branches of a lodgepole pine the male pine grosbeak, round and rose-colored, its dark, striped wings nearly invisible in the soft, mottled light. And the uppermost branches of the tree seemed very slowly to ride across the blue sky.

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

It was not an exclamation so much, I think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and disorder.