Quotes from Ceremony

“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, quote from Ceremony

“You don't have anything
if you don't have the stories.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“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, quote from Ceremony

“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, quote from Ceremony

“You damn your own soul better than I ever could.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“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, quote from Ceremony

“Being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that for a long time.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“He had to keep busy; he had to keep moving so that the sinews connected behind his eyes did not slip loose and spin his eyes to the interior of his skull where the scenes waited for him.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“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 is a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions... on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone. He had believed in the stories for a long time, until the teachers at Indian school taught him not to believe in that kind of "nonsense". But they had been wrong.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“He liked the way she talked. There was something in her eyes too. He saw it the first time when she had said, 'I've seen you before many times, and I always remembered you.' Josiah could not remember ever seeing her before, but there was something in her hazel brown eyes that made him believe her.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“Josiah said that only humans had to endure anything, because only humans resisted what they saw outside themselves. Animals did not resist. But they persisted, because they became part of the wind. (...) So they moved with the snow, became part of the snowstorm which drifted up against the trees and fences. And when they died, frozen solid against a fence, with the snow drifted around their heads? "Ah, Tayo," Josiah said, "the wind convinced them they were the ice.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“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, quote from Ceremony

“He could get no rest as long as the memories were tangled with the present”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“I will tell you something about stories, [he said] 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.   You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.   Their evil is mighty but it can’t stand up to our stories. So they try to destroy the stories let the stories be confused or forgotten. They would like that They would be happy Because we would be defenseless then.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“That was the responsibility that went with being human, old Ku’oosh said, the story behind each word must be told so there could be no mistake in the meaning of what had been said; and this demanded great patience and love.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“He cried the relief he felt at finally seeing the pattern, the way all the stories fit together—the old stories, the war stories, their stories—to become the story that was still being told. He was not crazy; he had never been crazy. He had only seen and heard the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distances and time.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“Josiah said that only humans had to endure anything, because only humans resisted what they saw outside themselves.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“The word he chose to express “fragile” was filled with the intricacies of a continuing process, and with a strength inherent in spider webs woven across paths through sand hills where early in the morning the sun becomes entangled in each filament of web.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“They are afraid, Tayo. They feel something happening, they can see something happening around them, and it scares them. Indians or Mexicans or whites—most people are afraid of change. They think that if their children have the same color of skin, the same color of eyes, that nothing is changing.” She laughed softly. “They are fools. They blame us, the ones who look different. That way they don’t have to think about what has happened inside themselves.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“But it left something with him; as long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“It took a great deal of energy to be a human being, and the more the wind blew and the sun moved southwest, the less energy Tayo had.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

“I will tell you something about stories, [he said] 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.   You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.   Their evil is mighty but it can’t stand up to our stories. So they try to destroy the stories let the stories be confused or forgotten. They would like that They would be happy Because we would be defenseless then.   He”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, quote from Ceremony

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