57 Quotes by 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.

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

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.

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.

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

I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud.

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

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.

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