Native Memoir Quotes

I understood why women went back to their abusers. The monster wasn't your real husband, he was a bad dream - an alien of sorts - who took over the spirit of your beloved one. He entered and left your husband. It was your real love you welcomed back in. ~ Joy Harjo

Meditation and mindfulness are tools for working with the mind, but where they have led me is to a blossoming of the heart... ~ Narissa Doumani

I try to walk around without being noticed but I can't help attracting attention with my pink Mohawk, black clothing and steel toes, and often I'm with Holly and we're both tall and arrogant. ~ Jo Treggiari

Stuart Hall was an utterly unique figure. Although he arrived at the age of 19 from Jamaica and spent the rest of his life here, he never felt at home in Britain. This juxtaposition was a crucial source of his strength and originality. Because of his colour and origin, he saw the country differently - not as a native, but as an outsider. ~ Martin Jacques

Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven't your equal ~ Charlotte Bronte

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Hippodamus, son of Euryphon, a native of Miletus, invented the art of planning and laid out the street plan of Piraeus. ~ Aristotle.

That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, where-ever it is capable of being exerted, is to be dreaded more than the plague. ~ St. George Tucker

I know the activists I deal with, we sort of try and check each other to make sure that we haven't gone native, that you come to Washington thinking it's a cesspool, you don't want to end up thinking it's really a hot tub and getting used to it. So that's something one has to keep an eye on all the time. ~ Grover Norquist

Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government
take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian. ~ Henry Ford

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. ~ John Millington Synge

He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The walls billowed with printed fabric - yellow, green, indigo, purple - and a red hammer-and-sickle flag hung over the batik-draped mattress. It was as if a Russian cosmonaut had crashed in the jungle and fashioned himself a shelter of his nation's flag and whatever native sarongs and textiles he could find. ~ Donna Tartt

No entrepreneur ever wrote a memoir that said, 'Then I did something terribly risky and not all that clever, but once again fortune chose to reward my stupidity. ~ Tim Dowling

Suppose a white man should come to me and say, "Joseph, I like your horses. I want to buy them." I say to him, "No, my horses suit me; I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor and says to him, "Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell." My neighbor answers, "Pay me the money and I will sell you Joseph's horses." The white man returns to me and says, "Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them." If we sold our lands to the government, this is the way they bought them. ~ Chief Joseph

That's the thing about parents, I'm beginning to realize. You don't have to see them all that much to imitate them. ~ Leigh Newman

The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. ~ Henry David Thoreau

What do think about abortion?"
"I could feel the tension growing in the plane. I dropped my head, acknowledging that we had very different value systems for our lives. Then I thought of a way to respond to his question.
"You're Jewish, right?" I asked.
"Yes," he said defensively. "I told you I was!"
"Do you know how Hitler persuaded the German people to destroy more than six million of your Jewish ancestors?" The man looked at me expectantly, so I continued. "He convinced them that Jews were not human and then exterminated your people like rats."
I could see that I had his attention, so I went on. "Do you understand how Americans enslaved, tortured, and killed millions of Africans? We dehumanized them so our constitution didn't apply to them, and then we treated them worse than animals."
"How about the Native Americans?" I pressed. "Do you have any idea how we managed to hunt Indians like wild animals, drive them out of their own land, burn their villages, rape their women, and slaughter their children? Do you have any clue how everyday people turned into cruel murderers?"
My Jewish friend was silent, and his eyes were filling with tears as I made my point. "We made people believe that the Native Americans were wild savages, not real human beings, and then we brutalized them without any conviction of wrongdoing! Now do you understand how we have persuaded mothers to kill their own babies? We took the word fetus, which is the Latin word for ~ Kris Vallotton

There is an old and very wise Native American saying: Every time you point a finger in scorn - there are three remaining fingers pointing right back at you. ~ Alyson Noel

How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I think I always knew I would be a writer some day, but it wasn't until I was grown and had children of my own that I turned to telling Native American stories. ~ Joseph Bruchac

consumer societies are stealing children away from their kith, their family of nature, in a steady alienation. This is not about some luxury, a hobby, a bit of playtime in the garden. This is about the longest, deepest necessity of the human spirit to know itself in nature, and about the homesickness children feel, whose genesis is so obvious but so little examined. Writer on Native American spirituality Linda Hogan describes the term susto as a sickness of soul caused by disconnection from nature and cured by 'the great without. ~ Jay Griffiths

Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot h'ors d'ourves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground. ~ Paul Rudnick

My great-grandfather was a man of great vision, drive, and native intelligence, with some human flaws amplified by limited education, limited social range, and questionable influence from some of his advisers. ~ William Clay Ford, Jr.

Tell me something in your native woodland language. ~ Marta Acosta

Your real presence on the earth can be truly experienced when you are at your own home. Its your native !! Its your motherland !! ~ Aditya Pandya

Have you ever gotten to a point where you looked at your own life, thought "Fu** this," and reached for the economy-sized Valium? Ah, suicide. So dark and seductive. ~ Rebecca O'Donnell

It's the same with the wound in our hearts. We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wounds continue to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time. We're all going to get hurt. But here's the trick - they also serve an amazing purpose.
When our hearts are wounded that's when they open.
We grow through pain.
We grow through difficult situations.
That's why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life. ~ James R. Doty

Even sentenced to twenty-five years in prison Ted didn't get what he deserved. Maybe his prison mates would give it to him. ~ Suzie Ivy

Man's obsession with his own wants is taking him further from those without whom happiness cannot be found. It is taking him from his people. ~ Anasazi Foundation

Memoir ... satisfies our need for gossip and intimacy, for testimony and confessional, and in this world of spin, offers a truthful account of what it means to succeed or fail, to love and lose, to break your heart and mend it again. ~ Jeanette Winterson

No matter where you're from - you can be Native American, Italian, Jewish, Latino, African-American - whatever you are, we're all distant relatives. ~ Nas

[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ~ John Stuart Mill

I can't help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude. ~ Koren Zailckas

When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. Now what's the difference? ~ Jesse Owens

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better. ~ Erin Bow

No authority is wholly natural or native; when we're not borrowing from our neighbors, we're borrowing from our ancestors. One reason art tends to come from looking outward and not just inward is that we're always speaking from a shaky authority, even when narrating our own experiences - maybe especially when narrating just ourselves. ~ Rivka Galchen

To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Peace of mind is the meaning of life" -Talisa Santiago (Spirit Seeker) ~ Jamie-Leigh Haden

A vow is a heavenly created obligation in motion that only ends when fully completed. ~ Lizelle DuPlessis

Carl constantly told horror stories of cursing and beatings from his father and the twenty-four-hour blackout screaming of his alcoholic, pill-popping mother. He used his trauma like a caution sign for what he could do if I didn't silence my backtalk. ~ Maggie Young

Unlike economic migrants, refugees have no agency; they are no threat. Often, they are so broken, they beg to be remade into the image of the native. As recipients of magnanimity, they can be pitied. (...) But if you are born in the Third World and you dare to make a move before you are shattered, your dreams are suspicious. You are a carpetbagger, an opportunist, a thief. You are reaching above your station. ~ Dina Nayeri

Just Another Number was meant to be unresolved because resolving it would destroy its authenticity. It's a memoir. I am unresolved as a human being. And it also leaves room for a sequel. ~ Maggie Young

I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark. ~ Anna White

If I were a lesbian and had a thing for narcissistic ex-sorority girls? I'd totally do me.
Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office: A Memoir ~ Jen Lancaster

This is the trouble with real-life story arcs: the happiness is so rarely saved for the end. ~ Richard Glover

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries. ~ Edith Wharton