Leslie Marmon Silko Quotes

born 1948 United States

Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon on March 5, 1948) is an American writer of Laguna Pueblo descent, regarded as a key figure in the First Wave of the Native American Renaissance.

United States
Essayists
Novelists
Poets
Short story writers

Random Leslie Marmon Silko quote

19 quotes

And in the belly of this story
the rituals and the ceremony
are still growing.

"Anybody can act violently - there is nothing to it; but not every person is able to destroy his enemy with words." (p222)

Storyteller (1981)

...as I tell the story
it will begin to happen...

Ceremony (1977)

I think what writers, storytellers, and poets have to say necessarily goes beyond such trivial boundaries as origin.

collected in Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko (1976)

This book is dedicated to the storytellers
as far back as memory goes and to the telling
which continues and through which they all live
and we with them.

Storyteller (1981)

It's generally double-edged. It seems with humor, there's always something beyond just the laughing that when you're laughing, you have to think beyond to greater considerations.

collected in Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko (1976)

Being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that for a long time. (p168)

Ceremony (1977)

It’s a matter of transitions, you see; the changing, the becoming must be cared for closely. You would do as much for the seedlings as they become plants in the field. (p120)

Ceremony (1977)

She was an old woman now, and her life had become memories. (beginning of "Lullaby")

Storyteller (1981)

Sacred time is always in the Present. (Part One, Book Five: The Border)

Almanac of the Dead (1991)

It took only one person to tear away the delicate strands of the web, spilling the rays of sun into the sand, and the fragile world would be injured. (p35)

Ceremony (1977)

The powers who controlled the United States didn't want the people to know their history. If the people knew their history, they would realize they must rise up. (Part Three, Book Two: Arizona)

Almanac of the Dead (1991)

Sister Salt called her to come outside. The rain smelled heavenly. All over the sand dunes, datura blossoms round and white as moons breathed their fragrance of magic. (beginning of Part One)

Gardens in the Dunes (2000)

Money! You couldn't drink it or eat it, but people went crazy over it. (Part 9, p398)

Gardens in the Dunes (2000)

Certainly for me the most effective political statement I could make is in my art work. I believe in subversion rather than straight-out confrontation. I believe in the sands of time, so to speak.

collected in Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko (1976)

We are told we should love only the good and the beautiful, and these are defined for us so narrowly. Monday I will be 31. Maybe it has taken me this long to discover that we are liable to love anything-like characters in old Greek stories who set eyes on an oak tree or a bucket and fall in love hopelessly, there are no limits to our love.

the material world and the flesh are only temporary - there are no sins of the flesh, spirit is everything! (page 450)

Gardens in the Dunes (2000)

The breaking and crushing were gone, and the love pushed inside his chest, and when he cried now, it was because she loved him so much. (p211)

Ceremony (1977)

"...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." (p215)

Ceremony (1977)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Leslie Marmon Silko (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.