Storyteller Quotes

“Where Mountain Lion Lay Down with Deer

I climb the black rock mountain
Stepping from day to day,
Silently,
I smell the wind for my ancestors
pale blue leaves
crushed wild mountain smell.
Returning
up the gray stone cliff
where I descended
a thousand years ago.
Returning to faded black stone
Where mountain lions lay down with deer.
It is better to stay up here
watching wind’s reflection
in tall yellow flowers.

How I danced in snow-frost moonlight
distant stars to the end of the Earth,

How I swam away
in freezing mountain water
narrow mossy canyon tumbling down
out of the mountain
out of deep canyon stone
down
the memory
spilling out
into the world.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“Old stories and new stories are essential: They tell us who we are, and they enable us to survive. We thank all the ancestors, and we thank all those people who keep on telling stories generation after generation, because if you don’t have the stories, you don’t have anything.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“Anybody can act violently--there is nothing to it, but not every person is able to destroy his enemy with words.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“I will tell you something about stories. They aren't just entertainment.
They are all we have to fight off illness and death. You don't have anything
if you don't have stories.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“The Storyteller’s Escape

The storyteller keeps the stories
all the escape stories
she says “With these stories of ours
we can escape almost anything
with these stories we will survive.”

The old teller has been on every journey
And she knows all the escape stories
Even stories told before she was born.
She keeps the stories for those who return
But more important
For the dear ones who do not come back
So that we may remember them
And cry for them with the stories.

“In this way
We hold them
And keep them with us forever
And in this way
We continue.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“Prayer to the Pacific

I traveled to the ocean
distant
from my southwest land of sandrock
to the moving blue water
Big as the myth of origin.

Pale
pale water in the yellow-white light of
sun floating west
to China where ocean herself was born.
Clouds that blow across the sand are wet.

Squat in the wet sand and speak to the Ocean:
I return to you turquoise the red coral you sent us,
sister spirit of Earth. Four round stones in my pocket
I carry back the ocean to suck and to taste.

Thirty thousand years ago
Indians came riding across the ocean
carried by giant sea turtles.

Waves were high that day
great sea turtles waded slowly out
from the gray sundown sea.
Grandfather Turtle rolled in the sand four times
and disappeared
swimming into the sun.
And so from that time
immemorial,
as the old people say,
rain clouds drift from the west
gift from the ocean.
Green leaves in the wind
Wet earth on my feet
swallowing raindrops
clear from China.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“Out of the Works No Good Comes From

The simple equation you found
in my notebook
frightened you
but I could have explained it:
After all bright colors of sunset and
leaves are added together
lovers are subtracted
children multiplied, are divided, taken away.

The remainder is small enough
To stay in this room forever
Gray-shadowing restless
Trapped on a gray grass plain,

I did not plan to tell you
Better to lose colors gradually
First the blue of the eyes
Then the red of blood
Its salt taste fading…
Wherever you’re heading tonight
You think you’re leaving me
An the equation of this gray room.
Hold her close
Pray
These are lies I am telling you.

…You’ll drive on
Putting distance and time between us-
The snow in the high Sierras
The dawn along the Pacific
Dreaming you’ve left this narrow room.
But tonight
I have traced all escape routes
With my finger across the tv weather map.
Your ocean dawn is only the gray light
In the corner of this room
Your mountain snowstorm
Flies against the glass screen
Until we both are buried.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“Cottonwood Part One: Story of Sun House:

Cottonwood,
cottonwood.
It was under the cottonwood tree
in a sandy wash of the big canyon
under the tree you can find
even now
among all the others
this tree
where she came to wait for him.
“You will know,”
he said
“you will know by the colors—
cottonwood leaves
more colors of the sun
than the sun himself.”

…Before that time,
there were no stories
about drastic things which
must be done
for the world to continue
Out of love for this earth
cottonwood
sandstone
and sky.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“Indian Song: Survival

We went north
to escape winter
climbing pale cliffs
we paused to sleep at the river.
Cold water river cold from the north
I sink my body in the shallow sink into sand and cold river water.

…Mountain forest wind travels east and I answer:
taste me,
I am the wind
touch me,
I am the lean gray deer
running on the edge of the rainbow.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller

“The humma-hah (meaning ‘long ago’) stories are traditional Pueblo stories that have been told continuously for thousands of years about a time when amazing things were possible, when the plants and animals and even rocks and stars used to converse with human beings. The humma-hah stories describe the various supernatural beings and other worlds and other times that still exist right beside the present world and present time”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller