Wagamese Richard Quotes & Sayings

For never yet
Has lover lived, but longed to wive
Like them that are no more alive. — William Butler Yeats

We approach our lives on different trajectories, each of us spinning in our own separate, shining orbits. What gives this life its resonance is when those trajectories cross and we become engaged with each other, for as long or as fleetingly as we do. There's a shared energy then, and it can feel as though the whole universe is in the process of coming together. I live for those times. No one is truly ever "just passing through." Every encounter has within it the power of enchantment, if we're willing to look for it. — Richard Wagamese

When your innocence is stripped from you, when your people are denigrated, when the family you came from is denounced and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced backward, primitive, savage, you come to see yourself as less than human. That is hell on earth, that sense of unworthiness. That's what they inflicted on us. — Richard Wagamese

We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.
The quote of a grandmother explaining The Great Mystery of the universe to her grandson. — Richard Wagamese

Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. — Roger Ebert

Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life. — Irving Stone

She only nodded. It's all we are in the end. Our stories. — Richard Wagamese

See, when we get sent out into the world we come here carryin' two sets of gifts. The gifts of the father an' gifts of the mother. The two human bein's that made our life. We came here carryin' those two sets of gifts, each one equal to the other. But sometimes the world gets hold of us and makes us see diff'rent way. We get told as men that we gotta be strong, gotta be fearless. Lotta us kinda start ignorin' the gifts of our mother. Go through life just usin' gifts of our father. Bein' tough, makin' our own plans, livin' in the head. But if you do that you can't be wholee on accounta you gotta use both of them equal setsa gifts to live right, to fill out the circle of your own life. Be complete. Gotta use the mother's gifts too. Like gentleness an' nurturin' livin' in the heart. — Richard Wagamese

I'm twenty-three years old, I'm working graveyard in the fucking mine and I been there since I was sixteen. I'll be thee until it kills me or I'm too fucking old. I ain't got no out. I don't mind that. I got Emma and I got the kids and I got the Moose until I'm too damn old for that too. But someone reached down and put lightning bolts in your legs, Saul. Someone put thunder in your wrist shot and eyes in the back of your fucking head. You were made for this game. So you gotta give this a shot for all of us who're never gonna get out of Manitouwadge. — Richard Wagamese

Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.
Quoted by Richard Wagamese in Ragged Company — John Steinbeck

After all, he did say you were the issue of an encounter between your father and a traeling hatcha-hatcha dancer."
There was a gasp of horror from the crowd.
Duncan, smiling thinly, said through gritted teeth: "Thank you so much for reminding us all, Anthony. — John Flanagan

When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country. — Baz Luhrmann

Sometimes people just need to talk. They need to be heard. they need the validation of my time, my silence, my unspoken compassion. They don't need advice, sympathy or counselling. They need to hear the sound of their own voices speaking their own truths, articulating their own feelings, as those may be at a particular moment. Then, when they're finished, they simply need a nod of the head, a pat on the shoulder or a hug. I'm learning that sometimes silence really is golden, and that sometimes "Fuck, eh?" is as spiritual a thing as needs to be said. — Richard Wagamese

I find it shocking that anybody can be brought down in D.C. for gossip, ostensibly. I thought that was the coin of the realm there. That's like getting hit with lightning on a cloudless day. — Dennis Miller

They scooped out our insides, Saul. We're not responsible for that. We're not responsible for what happened to us. None of us are. Fred said. But our healing
that's up to us. That's what saved me. Knowing it was my game. — Richard Wagamese

For my wife Deborah, for allowing me to bask in her light and become more. — Richard Wagamese

That's what's important really, Keeper says. Learning how to be what the Creator created you to be. Face your truth. — Richard Wagamese

I am able to say that I was very much liked at the school. I even had quite some ascendancy over my comrades, and as soon as I appeared in the school yard, I was surrounded by young friends, most of them bigger than I, but who were quite willing to give the appearance of disciples; they would have defended me furiously if necessary. — Marquis De Lafayette

There is a tendency for characters who march on past their sell-by date to become caricatures of themselves - to tread the same ground, growing more stale with each step. — Mark Lawrence

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name. — Leonard Cohen

We become eternal by being held in memory's loving arms. — Richard Wagamese

Jimmy used to say we're a Great Mystery. Everything. Said the things they done, those old-time indians, was all about learnin' to live with that mystery. Not solving it, not comin' to grips with it, not even tryin' to guess it out. Just bein' with it. I guess I wish I'da learned the secret to doing that. — Richard Wagamese

The head has no answers, and the heart has no questions, Jack would say.
Quoting his teacher and good friend Jack Kakakaway — Richard Wagamese

We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks the contemplation of a work of art. — John F. Carlson

The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It's less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it. — Carl Honore

We saw groups of people gathering in front of Lula's house in Sao Paulo this morning. You had people shouting at one another, and some fistfights even broke out. Some of his supporters are claiming that this is equivalent of a coup attempt, an attempt to remove Rousseff from power and prevent Lula from running again. And other people are saying that this is simply a display of rule of law in Brazil, that no one in Brazil can be above the law at this time. — Simon Romero

I gave them nothing back because all I knew was the vast amount they had taken from me, robbed me of, cheated me out of, all in the name of a God whose son bore the long hair none of us were allowed to wear any more. — Richard Wagamese

Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the clouds hung low and light rain freckled the slate-grey water that peeled across our bow. The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught them on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us. Our canoes skimmed along and as I watched the shoreline it seemed the land itself was in motion. The rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of it, and the trees bent upward in praise like crooked fingers. It was glorious. Ben felt it too. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and I held his look a long time, drinking in the face of my brother. — Richard Wagamese

Every individual has a unique contribution. — Jack Kornfield

I am constantly surrounded by noise: TV, texts, the internet, music, meaningless small talk, my thinking. All of it blocks my consciousness, my ability to her the ME that exists beneath the cacophony. I am my consciousness, my awareness of my circumstance, my presence in every moment. So I cultivate silence every morning. I sit in it, bask in it, wrap it around myself, and hear and feel me. Then, wherever the day takes me, the people I meet are the beneficiaries of my having taken that time - they get the real me, not someone shaped and altered by the noise around me. Silence is the stuff of life. — Richard Wagamese

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks. — Richard Wagamese

There was a feeling in him like waiting for a punishment. — Richard Wagamese

There is such a powerful eloquence in silence. True genius is knowing when to say nothing, to allow the experience, the moment itself, to carry the message, to say what needs to be said. Words are less important, less effective than feeling. When you can sit in perfect silence with someone, you truly know how to communicate. — Richard Wagamese

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass. — Bruce Springsteen

I discovered that being someone you are not is often easier than living with the person you are. — Richard Wagamese

I understood then that when you miss a thing it leaves a hole that only the thing you miss can fill. — Richard Wagamese

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal — Viktor E. Frankl

He held his hand up to his face and licked the wound. Blood. Old-tasting and rich like the sediment of a river. He looked at Jimmy. The blood on their faces meant they were part of the same stream now, bobbing in the current, borne forward effortlessly under the slowly twirling dome of the sky. — Richard Wagamese