N. Scott Momaday

Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could…

— N. Scott Momaday

He used both hands when he made the bear. Imagine a bear proceeding from the hands of God.

— N. Scott Momaday

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

— N. Scott Momaday

“The events of one’s life take place, take place. How often have I used this expression, and how often have I stopped…

— N. Scott Momaday

The character of the landscape changes from hour to hour, day to day, season to season. Nothing of the earth can be…

— N. Scott Momaday

“It was not an exclamation so much, I think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and…

— N. Scott Momaday

The landscape of the American West has to be seen to believed and has to be believed to be seen.

— N. Scott Momaday

The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian…

— N. Scott Momaday

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

— N. Scott Momaday

I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and…

— N. Scott Momaday

Her name is Ago, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America.

— N. Scott Momaday

My line of vision was such that the creature filled the moon like a fossil. It had gone there, I thought, to…

— N. Scott Momaday

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.

— N. Scott Momaday

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to…

— N. Scott Momaday

Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of…

— N. Scott Momaday

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

— N. Scott Momaday

The turn of the century was the lowest point for the devastation of Indian culture by disease and persecution, and it's a…

— N. Scott Momaday

“At first she thought the writing would be easy. She was extremely confident in her ability to dream, to imagine, and she…

— N. Scott Momaday

The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and…

— N. Scott Momaday

To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.

— N. Scott Momaday

“We perceive existence by means of words and names. To this or that vague, potential thing I will give a name, and…

— N. Scott Momaday

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least,…

— N. Scott Momaday

To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of…

— N. Scott Momaday

I am a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society; I visit sacred places such as Devil's Tower and the Medicine Wheel.…

— 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…

— N. Scott Momaday