Leslie Marmon Silko Quotes

26 Sourced Quotes

For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke... They saw his outline but they did not realize it was hollow inside.

Leslie Marmon Silko
As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The snow... came in thick tufts like new wool — washed before the weaver spins it.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The only way to get change is not through the courts or — heaven forbid — the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts — music, poetry, dance, painting, writing — can we really reach each other.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The story was the important thing and little changes here and there were really part of the story. There were even stories about the different versions of stories and how they imagined the differing versions came to be.

Leslie Marmon Silko
But sometimes what we call 'memory' and what we call 'imagination' are not so easily distinguished.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Anybody can act violently — there is nothing to it; but not every person is able to destroy his enemy with words.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there was a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions-exactly which way to go and what to do to get there; it depended on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone.

Leslie Marmon Silko
When someone dies, you don't 'get over it' by forgetting; you 'get over it' by remembering, and by remembering you are aware that no person is ever truly lost or gone once they have been in our lives and loved us, as we have loved them.

Leslie Marmon Silko
It's only a matter of time, Indian
you can't sleep with the river forever.

Leslie Marmon Silko
She was an old woman now, and her life had become memories.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that for a long time.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Fortunately, her year of graduate classes prepared her for obnoxious conduct.

Leslie Marmon Silko
You don't have anything
if you don't have the stories.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The material world and the flesh are only temporary — there are no sins of the flesh, spirit is everything!

Leslie Marmon Silko
Moonflowers blossom in the sand hills before dawn, just as I followed him.

Leslie Marmon Silko
He made a story for all of them, a story to give them strength. The words of the story poured out of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles and stone extending to hold the corporal up...knees from buckling...hands from letting go of the blanket.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Relationships. That's all there really is. There's your relationship with the dust that just blew in your face, or with the person who just kicked you end over end.... You have to come to terms, to some kind of equilibrium, with those people around you, those people who care for you, your environment.

Leslie Marmon Silko
I don't make outlines or plans because whenever I do, they turn out to be useless. It is as if I am compelled to violate the scope of any outline or plan; it is as if the writing does not want me to know what is about to happen.

Leslie Marmon Silko
But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and the animals. They see no life. When they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and the rivers are not alive. the mountains and stones are not alive. The deer and bear are objects. They see no life. They fear. They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The American public has difficulty believing... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The ancient people perceived the world and themselves within that world as part of an ancient continuous story composed of innumerable bundles of other stories.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the war. They blamed themselves for losing the new feeling; they never talked about it, but they blamed themselves just like they blamed themselves for losing the land the white people took.

Leslie Marmon Silko
I will tell you something about stories.... They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All we have to fight off illness and death.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Jungle rain had no beginning or end; it grew like foliage from the sky, branching and arching to the earth, sometimes in solid thickets entangling the islands, and, other times, in tendrils of blue mist curling out of coastal clouds. The jungle breathed an eternal green that fevered men until they dripped sweat the way rubbery jungle leaves dripped the monsoon rain.

Leslie Marmon Silko