Kiss of the Fur Queen Quotes

“Don't mourn me. Be joyful.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“The Trickster, of course," Gabriel finally answered himself, "Weesageechak for sure. The clown who bridges humanity and God - a God who laughs, a God who's here, not for guilt, not for suffering, but for a good time. Except this time, the Trickster representing God as a woman, a goddess in fur. Like in this picture. I've always thought that, ever since we were little kids. I mean, if Native languages have no gender, then why should we? And why, for that matter, should God?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Wars start when two parties haven't taken the time to learn each other's tongues”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“What I did, I did on my own. Don't mourn me. Be joyful.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“I mean, if Native languages have no gender, then why should we? And why, for that matter, should God?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“We're Indian! We have a right to conduct our own religious ceremonies, just like everyone else!”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“I mean, if Native languages have no gender, then why should we?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Was the colonization of North America not every bit as bloody as the French Revolution?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“At night, when the streets of your cities and villages are silent, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them, and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people. For the dead are not powerless.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“The mall,” said Jeremiah early next morning as he reached for the handle of the large glass door, “was invented in Winnipeg,”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Weesageechak for sure. The clown who bridges humanity and God-a God who laughs, a God who's here, not for guilt, not for suffering, but for a good time.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Show me the bastard who come up with this notion that who's running the goddamn show is some grumpy, embittered, sexually frustrated old fart with a long white beard hiding like a gutless coward behind some puffed-up cloud and I'll slice his goddamn balls off.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“He's not finished talking to us," Gabriel shot back, suddenly gripped by hatred of the priest, of the power he wielded.

Father Bouchard knew precisely whom Gabriel's fury was meant for. But he knew, too, that Holy Orders were as impregnable as granite.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Where, exactly, was this hell?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Amanda said that Indian religion listens to the drum, to the heartbeat of Mother Earth.

That's pagan, Gabriel, savages do that kind of thing. How can you listen to people like--?

Christianity asks people to eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood-shit, Jeremiah, eating human flesh, that's cannibalism. What could be more savage-?

Jesus wasn't a man. He was the Son of God.

Hah! Do you wonder why the world is so filled with blood and war and hate when it has, as its central symbol, an instrument of torture?

The crucifix is a symbol of ope, for God's sake, Amanda, I mean Gabriel! It's an instrument of love!

Sure. An instrument of love. If you're into whips and chains and pain. Where do you think them priests get their jollies?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“These church-goers, they talk about respect, and love and peace and all that jazz, and the minute they're out of that church, they're just as mean and selfish as they were before. It's as if going to church gives them the right to act like, well...like assholes.

They're not all like that, take out parents. They're Catholics and they're good people.

Yes, they are, but what about all those Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland? Blowing each other's brains out over the love of Jesus Christ.

That's political. It has nothing to do with religion or, or, or spiritual belief.

Yes it does. Every war in the history of the world has had religion at its root. And what about those guys who beat the shit out of their wives while the host is still melting on their tongues? All that does is make one lose respect for organized religion.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Only old people go to church, when they know they're running out of time.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Them little ol' priests, the things they did? Pooh! No wonder us Indian folk are all the shits.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Look. What use is there pretending to be what you are not? You and me and your little brother, we're the only three Indians in a school filled with two thousand white middle-class kids. We can't let them walk all over us.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“There were many bloody period in human history, many of them occurring right here in North America.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“You can sell a woman?
In cities, it's done all the time, all the time. It's like selling meat.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“You never told us how to spend time alone in the midst of half a million people. Here, stars don't shine at night, trees don't speak.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Wars start when two parties haven't taken the time to learn each other's tongues.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“He narrowed his eyes to slits so that he could peer into the eyes of this shameless, strutting personage to whom, apparently, modesty was unknown. He took careful note of the fact that the king - "Lucy," the priest called him - was not glaring venomously. King Lucy was grinning, King Lucy was having a good time.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“As a certain philosopher of ancient Greece once put it, the difference between the historian and poet/storyteller is that where the historian relates what happened, the storyteller tells us how it might have come about.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Some say that Weesaceechak left this continent when the white man came. We believe she/he is still here among us - albeit a little the worse for ear and tear - having assumed other guises. Without the continued presence of this extraordinary figure, the core of Indian culture would be gone forever.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“The most explicit distinguishing feature between the North American Indian languages and the European languages is that in Indian, there is no gender. In Cree, Ojibway, etc., unlike English, French, German, etc., the male-female-neuter hierarchy is entirely absent. So that by this system of thought, the central hero figure from our mythology - theology, if you will - is theoretically neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, or is both simultaneously.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Essentially a comic, clownish sort of character, his role is to teach us about the nature and the meaning of existence on the planet Earth; he straddles the consciousness of man and that of God, the Great Spirit.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“if machipoowamoowin, bad dream power, was obvioulsy powerful enough to snuff out a human life, then would not mithoopoowamoowin, good dream power, be as strong?”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

“But Gabriel saw people talking to the sky, the sky replying. And he knew he had to learn this dance. Someday soon, he may need it.”
― Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen