Gerald Vizenor Quotes & Sayings

The first Western teacher of English in Japan was a Native American. — Gerald Vizenor

Race is an invention, not a noticeable genetic presence, and cultural traits are brute concoctions of the social sciences. — Gerald Vizenor

Trickster stories are pleasurable, contradictory, annoying, abrasive. They're powerful, transformational acts of liberation because they are not nailed down to the real, to the representation of something in the world. — Gerald Vizenor

There are 13 stories in 'The Fencepost Chronicles' about corrupt tribal leaders, trouble on the reserve, survival schemes, and communal drinking. — Gerald Vizenor

The idea of victimage is a dreadful thing, a product of a safe middle-class perspective. What people who are not safe develop is a tragic wisdom, a wisdom that embraces contradiction and seeks a sense of balance rather than going to extremes. — Gerald Vizenor

W. P. Kinsella, who was born on a farm near Edmunton, Alberta, has earned wide recognition for his wild imagination and rash humor as a writer. — Gerald Vizenor

I'm a visual thinker. With almost all of my writing, I start with something that's visual: either the way someone says something that is visual or an actual visual description of a scene and color. — Gerald Vizenor

There is a sense of motion and a concise, immediate image in haikus and Anishinaabe dream songs. — Gerald Vizenor

The great liberation of imaginative writing is that you're not held back by the facts. — Gerald Vizenor

Even the earliest cave paintings in France and Spain had natural motion. — Gerald Vizenor

It's so difficult to write in motion and get rid of the past tense, and also to create a sense of impermanence. — Gerald Vizenor

Life is a chance, a story is a chance. That I am here is a chance. — Gerald Vizenor

If you desecrate a white grave, you wind up sitting in prison. But desecrate an Indian grave, and you get a Ph.D. — Gerald Vizenor

Naanabozho was the first tribal trickster on the earth. — Gerald Vizenor

Indians are usually seen as capsulized: limited to one environment, with the illusion of stability in that environment. But Indians have been engaged all over the world for centuries, in Europe, even in Asia. — Gerald Vizenor

Mixed-bloods loosen the seams in the shrouds of identities. — Gerald Vizenor

Confucius would give his seat to an old woman. Communist cadres, on the other hand, took the best seats and called it a cultural revolution. — Gerald Vizenor

I use not casual phrases but imagistic phrases that create a rhythm of natural presence. — Gerald Vizenor