Michael Dorris Quotes & Sayings

Don't ask so many questions and they will all be answered. — Michael Dorris

I'm not what they expect. About once a year I get discovered, get called a diamond in the rough. — Michael Dorris

We Americans are tempted to distinguish ourselves from other current and former inhabitants of this planet by assuming that we are ruled by progress. — Michael Dorris

At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds — Michael Dorris

The necessity of loyalty between friends, the responsibility that the strong owe the infirm, the illusion of ill-gotten gain, the rewards of hard work, honesty, and trust-these are enduring truths glimpsed and judged first through the imagination, first through art. — Michael Dorris

These boots were made for dancing"(260) — Michael Dorris

She'd have the two of them eating out of her shoe. I've watched her in action, but I could never get away with it. And, I console myself, being cute hasn't made her all that happy. — Michael Dorris

The World Bank, anxious that the last vestiges of Zimbabwe's former inclination toward socialism be abandoned, successfully urged the imposition of a token tuition charge for all grade levels. Equivalent to one U. S. dollar per year per child, this fee constitutes a burden to the poorest families, who have responded by sending only boys to classes. Too many of the girls ... have resorted to prostitution in order to eat. — Michael Dorris

Fear is a memory of better times. Fear is a dream. — Michael Dorris

Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? Is it necessary to the American psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history? — Michael Dorris

Dinner is to a day what dessert is to dinner. — Michael Dorris

Grandfather was well known for being stubborn in his ideas. For instance ... you had to go to sleep facing east so that you would be ready to greet the sun when it returned. — Michael Dorris

I watched the way you watch when you know you want to remember. — Michael Dorris

Without somebody to watch me, laugh at my jokes, tell me what to do, ask me questions, race me to the river, make me guess the names of birds, or challenge me to count the silvery fish in a school, there was nothing for me to do. Without somebody to be somebody to, it was as though I wasn't somebody myself. — Michael Dorris

To be known for one's saddest story is not the road to notoriety anyone would willingly choose. — Michael Dorris

I certainly don't object to [writers] trying to imagine the lives of other societies, but you have to do it with a certain amount of humility and respect. If it were not for the ethnographic material that had been collected by missionaries and anthropologists and so forth, much of past Native American society would no longer be accessible. What I object to is making kitsch of things that are very serious. — Michael Dorris

And she has been there. I know because her senior high school yearbook, the one with no Daytons, is gone from the bureau where i had left it. She's seen my things scattered about. She knows I'm still here. But she didn't wait Part of me doesn't want to give up, and makes excuses. "She'll be back =," it says. "She just didn't want to run into Aunt Ida. Now that she knows you're here ... " But she knew it. Where else would I be? I have to face it: I'm not as important as some package she needs from Seattle. My presence won't bring her back. — Michael Dorris

Here are two facts that should not both be true:
- There is sufficient food produced in the world every year to feed every human being on the planet.
- Nearly 800 million people literally go hungry every day, with more than a third of the earth's population
2 billion men and women
malnourished one way or another, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. — Michael Dorris

My son will forever travel through a moonless night with only the roar of wind for company ... A drowning man is not separated from the lust for air by a bridge of thought - he is one with it - and my son, conceived and grown in an ethanol bath, lives each day in the act of drowning. For him there is no shore. — Michael Dorris