N. Scott Momaday Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Native American, Destiny, Imagination

  87 Copy quote

• 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

  Travel, Memories, Eye

  92 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Believe, Men, Hands

  N. Scott Momaday (1976). “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, p.83, UNM Press

  51 Copy quote

• Anything is bearable if you can make a story out of it.

  N. Scott Momaday

  History, Stories, Bearable

  51 Copy quote

• If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Believe, Power Of Words, Ifs

  N. Scott Momaday, Charles Woodard (1989). “Ancestral voice: conversations with N. Scott Momaday”

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Space, Forever, Devil

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  Giving, Sound, All Things

  N. Scott Momaday (1976). “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, p.33, UNM Press

  31 Copy quote

• 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. If we are to realize and maintain our humanity, we must come to a moral comprehension of earth and air as it is perceived in the long turn of seasons and of years.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Air, Blood, Years

  40 Copy quote

• 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

  Medicine, Magic, Sound

  28 Copy quote

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

  N. Scott Momaday

  Dream, Dark, Night

  67 Copy quote

• The highest human purpose is always to reinvent and celebrate the sacred.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Religion, Gardening, Purpose

  "Think Diffident". www.wired.com. December 01, 2000.

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Order, History, Landscape

  "The West (The People)". TV Series, September 15, 1996.

  23 Copy quote

• Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. 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 upon it, and dwell upon it.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Home, Men, Giving

  N. Scott Momaday (1976). “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, p.83, UNM Press

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Dog, Night, Voice

  30 Copy quote

• The landscape of the American West has to be seen to believed and has to be believed to be seen.

  N. Scott Momaday

  American West, West, Landscape

  5 Copy quote

• For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Survival, Doe, Chance

  21 Copy quote

• I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Thinking, White, Sometimes

  "Pioneer of Modern Native American Literature". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Blood, Forever, Mind

  "Remembered Earth: New Mexico's High Desert". www.pbs.org. 2005.

  6 Copy quote

• Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Thinking, Imagination, Creation

  N. Scott Momaday (1976). “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, p.5, UNM Press

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Attitude, Writing, Hands

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Giving, Firsts, Thirds

  N. Scott Momaday (1976). “The Names: A Memoir”, p.154, University of Arizona Press

  16 Copy quote

• Loneliness is an aspect of the land.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Loneliness, Land, Aspect

  N. Scott Momaday (1976). “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, p.5, UNM Press

  4 Copy quote

• Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Stronger, Oral Tradition, Way

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Taken, Character

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Stars, Distance, Dark

  6 Copy quote

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