N. Scott Momaday Quotes & Sayings

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian. — N. Scott Momaday

The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on. You cannot begin with the second word ... — N. Scott Momaday

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

I am a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society; I visit sacred places such as Devil's Tower and the Medicine Wheel. These places are important to me, because they've been made sacred by sacrifice, by the investment of blood and experience and story. — N. Scott Momaday

The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance they could see. — N. Scott Momaday

Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountian, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood — N. Scott Momaday

Anything is bearable if you can make a story out of it. — N. Scott Momaday

I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. — N. Scott Momaday

If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe. — N. Scott Momaday

To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil's Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space. — N. Scott Momaday

There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there. — N. Scott Momaday

It is here that I can concentrate my mind upon the Remembered Earth. It is here that I am most conscious of being, here that wonder comes upon my blood, here I want to live forever; and it is no matter that I must die. — N. Scott Momaday

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition. — N. Scott Momaday

In the white man's world, language, too
and the way which the white man thinks of it
has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language
for the Word itself
as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word. — N. Scott Momaday

Her name is Ago, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America. — N. Scott Momaday

My line of vision was such that the creature filled the moon like a fossil. It had gone there, I thought, to live and die, for there, of all places, was its small definition made whole and eternal — N. Scott Momaday

They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting. — N. Scott Momaday

He used both hands when he made the bear. Imagine a bear proceeding from the hands of God. — N. Scott Momaday

To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. — N. Scott Momaday

The highest human purpose is always to reinvent and celebrate the sacred. — N. Scott Momaday

There was only the dark infinity in which nothing was. And something happened. At the distance of a star something happened, and everything began. The Word did not come into being, but it was. It did not break upon the silence, but it was older than the silence and the silence was made of it. — N. Scott Momaday

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

Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to. — N. Scott Momaday

The character of the landscape changes from hour to hour, day to day, season to season. Nothing of the earth can be taken for granted; you feel that Creation is going on in your sight. You see things in the high air that you do not see farther down in the lowlands. In the high country all objects bear upon you, and you touch hard upon the earth. From my home I can see the huge, billowing clouds; they draw close upon me and merge with my life. — N. Scott Momaday

East of my grandmother's house the sun rises out of the plain. Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. — N. Scott Momaday

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other. The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated. And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence. — N. Scott Momaday

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me. — N. Scott Momaday

Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun. — N. Scott Momaday

In the beginning was the word, and it was spoken. — N. Scott Momaday

You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive — N. Scott Momaday

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse. — N. Scott Momaday

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. — N. Scott Momaday

Art is affirmation. — N. Scott Momaday

It's a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And as I say on occasion, it may have to be believed in order to be seen. — N. Scott Momaday

I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud. — N. Scott Momaday

The canyon is a ladder to the plain. The valley is pale in the end of July, when the corn and melons come of age and slowly the fields are made ready for the yield, and a faint, false air of autumn - an illusion still in the land - rises somewhere away in the high north country, a vague suspicion of red and yellow on the farthest summits. And the town lies out like a scattering of bones in the heart of the land, low in the valley, where the earth is a kiln and the soil is carried here and there in the wind and all harvests are a poor survival of the seed. It is a remote place, and divided from the rest of the world by a great forked range of mountains on the north and west; by wasteland on the south and east, a region of dunes and thorns and burning columns of air; and more than these by time and silence. — N. Scott Momaday

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. — N. Scott Momaday

Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which is very serious. That balance is very hard to strike. But it can be done. — N. Scott Momaday

Loneliness is an aspect of the land. — N. Scott Momaday

Sill. Their horses and weapons were confiscated, and they were imprisoned. In a field just — N. Scott Momaday

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. — N. Scott Momaday

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival. — N. Scott Momaday

It's a matter of honor, death. It's your white page, do you see? Or your shame. Either you're worthy of it or you ain't. To accept it, to face it with honor and respect and goodwill, to earn it, that is to be brave. — N. Scott Momaday

He wondered what his sorrow was and could not remember. — N. Scott Momaday

I prayed. He was going home, and I wanted to pray. Look out for me, I said; look out each day and listen for me. And we were going together on horses to the hills. We were going to ride out in the first light to the hills. We were going to see how it was, and always was, how the sun came up with a little wind and the light ran out upon the land. We were going to get drunk, I said. We were going to be all alone, and we were going to get drunk and sing. We were going to sing about the way it always was. And it was going to be right and beautiful. It was going to be the last time. And he was going home. — N. Scott Momaday

We perceive existence by means of words and names. To this or that vague, potential thing I will give a name, and it will exist thereafter, and its existence will be clearly perceived. The name enables me to see it. I can call it by its name, and I can see it for what it is. — N. Scott Momaday

The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian person in one way or another. — N. Scott Momaday

The turn of the century was the lowest point for the devastation of Indian culture by disease and persecution, and it's a wonder to me that they survived it and have not only maintained their identity, but are actually growing stronger in some ways. The situation is still very bad, especially in certain geographical areas, but there are more Indians going to school, more Indians becoming professional people, more Indians assuming full responsibility in our society. We have a long way to go, but we're making great strides. — N. Scott Momaday

Abel,' she said after a moment, 'do you think that I am beautiful?'
She had gone to the opposite wall and turned. She leaned back with her hands behind her, throwing her head a little in order to replace a lock of hair that had fallen across her brow. She sucked at her cheeks, musing. 'No, not beautiful,' he said. — N. Scott Momaday

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.' — N. Scott Momaday

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. — N. Scott Momaday

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined. — N. Scott Momaday

The events of one's life take place, take place. How often have I used this expression, and how often have I stopped to think about what it means? Events do indeed take place, they have meaning in relation to things around them. — N. Scott Momaday

Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition. — N. Scott Momaday

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages. — N. Scott Momaday