Split Tooth Quotes

“We are product of the immense torque that propels this universe. We are not individuals but a great accumulation of all that lived before.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“This is where my lesson was learned: pain is to be expected, courage is to be welcomed. There is no choice but to endure. There is no other way than to renounce self-doubt. It is the time of the Dawning in more ways than one. The sun can rise, and so can I”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“The foxes run. The foxes die. I mourn them, but I understand that there is danger in mourning for those who would not mourn for you in return. Empathy is for those who can afford it. Empathy is for the privileged. Empathy is not for Nature.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“If you are living in silence
With violence in your bones
Sorrow in your marrow
Blood running cold
Heal I beg you
Heal I beg you
Heal I beg you
Heal”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Time has a way of eternally looping us in the same configurations. Like fruit flies, we are unable to register the patterns. Just because we are the crest of the wave does not mean the ocean does not exist. What has been before will be again.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“There are secrets hidden in our flesh. Our cells being born and dying with the same force that makes galaxies form and deconstruct.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“What happens to the energy once it leaves our body? Does it leave us or does it start vibrating at an unknown frequency? Does it cast itself into the wind and leave our vessels lonely? Do our spirits travel with the wind? Do our spirits retain our value and ascend into the Knowing or are we demoted when our bodies decay? Are we as worthy while we rot? How many layers of consciousness are there? Are we still giving? Is being inanimate really a lesser state?”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Addiction is anything that feels good in the moment but ultimately makes you feel worse, a degeneration of the psyche that takes shape physically. All our weaknesses add up and become our strongest adversaries. It is fuel for self-hatred, insecurity, self-pity, and martyrdom.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“We are our ancestors. The spiritual umbilicus is apparent to all. The dead look upon us with the pure love of a mother’s gaze. But the dead love is even more because of our flawed flesh and eternal confusion. The removal from form allows for total and complete unconditional love. We carry our dead with us like helium balloons. There is no breaking the umbilicus.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“When your body is clear there is control. When your body is clear you can choose whom to let in. There is love everywhere.
Please cradle my rabbit heart. Please navigate yourself around me well. I know too much. I can recognize darkness because he is my brother, my maker. I can drink lightness because it is the only way to survive. I can shut off my heart but that leads to evil, so I express her and revel in the nuance of blood currents, and the sacred demons. I fear and quake with my eyes darting fight or flight love or die. The lightning comes from below this time and rips out of my throat for the world to see. They all see my rabbit and I have trained her to hunt. In her perfect glory she is shy and extroverted, chaste and perverted, my sweet near-death more alive than ever. Take her. Take me while I am ripe and open, rub berries on my lips and bear fat in my hair. Tattoo me with a needle and impale me with your warmth. Heal me, fuck me, and work my heart till she beats strong and unafraid. Haunches bared, teeth sharpened, wide-eyed and aware. Hurry. I want to feel safe.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“In the spring you smell last fall's death and this year's growth as the elder lichen shows the young how to grow.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“These foxes will die of starvation; better to put them out of their misery. These foxes will harm schoolchildren; better to put them out of their misery. These humans will destroy the earth; better to put them out of their misery.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“The partiers will just demand that I echo their toxicity. Nothing bores me more.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Murder can heal if applied sparingly. Murder can feed us. Life murders us every day.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Just because we are the crest of the wave does not mean the ocean does not exist. What has been before will be again. We are reverberations of our Ancestors and songs of our present selves. It is very quiet in the future, as it is in the deep past. The Quiet. We always live alongside the dead. It’s scary but the Quiet is our true home.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“I never understood how foreigners could come and tell us where to die and where to live. Where to be buried and how to breed.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“We always live along side the dead. It's scary but the quiet is our true home. This is why we must make the most of our gristle and meat.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“The ocean is like a warm bath. I mount his back and ride him. My thighs squeeze him and pulse with a tingling light. We are lovers. We are married. He swims with incredible strength and we travel quickly. He keeps me safe and I am drunk on his dignity. The smaller bears shrink, only to be eaten by engorged shrimp. The ocean grows hot with life after the offering of food. My skin melts where there is contact with my lover. The ocean and our love fuse the polar bear and me. He is I, his skin is my skin. Our flesh grows together. His face is my pussy and she is hungry. My legs sprout white fur that spreads all over me. I can feel every hair form inside of me and poke through tough bearskin. My whole body absorbs him and we become a new being. I am invincible. Bear mother, rabbit daughter, seal eater. Bear lover, human lover, ice pleaser. I will live another year.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“I mourn them, but I understand that there is danger in mourning for those who would not mourn for you in return. Empathy is for those who can afford it. Empathy is for the privileged. Empathy is not for Nature.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“the air is so clean you can smell the difference between smooth rock and jagged.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“What happens before birth and resumes after death - this is more real than the brief spark of life. Out lives just carry the physical burden of carrying energy forward. We put on suits of meat as training, as a challenge. We all know this is temporary.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“I feel something enter the room, coming in from the top right corner. I cannot see it but I know its there, plain as day. My real self recognizes the feeling, recognizes the place this being came from, where it lives. There are other realities that exist besides our own; it is foolish to think otherwise. The universe is conscious. This thing comes from the layers of energy beyond our physical perception. The place we go to after we die, the place we were before being conceived. These places holds us for millenia in Universe Time. We are on Earth and in flesh for only a moment. Before we are born, energy must be woven into spirit and then siphoned into a body. After we die the spirit must be consoled after the trauma of flesh and then unravelled back into energy. It feels good to remember this place, but the thing that has arrived here is not good.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“This is not the last time he will get himself in trouble with bravado that cannot be backed up. He ends up dying that way.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“There is a siren that sounds in our small town to announce the curfew. At noon and at 10 p.m. Every time the siren sounds all the sled dogs howl, and I imagine that they think there is a large, loud god dog that rules the land howling. I equate this with religion. A short-sighted and desperate attempt for humans to create reason and order in a universe we can't possibly comprehend. The simple truth is that we are simply an expression of the energy of the sun. We are the glorious manifestation of the power of the universe.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“For the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and survivors of residential schools.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Just because we are the crest of the wave does not mean the ocean does not exist. What has been before will be again. We are reverberations of our Ancestors and songs of our present selves. It is very quiet in the future, as it is in the deep past. The Quiet. We always live alongside the dead. It’s scary but the Quiet is our true home. This is why we”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Fox is more beautiful than any human I've ever seen. I can feel him. Clean, strong, devoted to survival, and unburdened by all the falsehoods that humans subconsciously subscribe to. Clarity. Dignity. All of what we have lost as humans is transparent in the eyes of one who lives from the Land. The tingling sensation returns in my face. It feels as if my face is elongating. I see you, Fox, and you are a child and a killer. You are bigger than I and you will have a better life and death. You are penetrating my body and changing my flesh with your eyes. Beckoning. You want me to Become with you.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Wind on face, rhythm in chaos, and consolation in constellations.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“Dreams will follow you into the day to force action, to change what caused the anxiety. We never like to listen to ourselves, even when we know we have to. We plod on ignoring what we must be, what we are meant to be. We are taught to fear instincts. We must hunt down and fall in love with the Fear, therefore defeating our self-doubt every day. This is followed by joy. This is followed by handing over control. This is followed by lightness. This is followed by freedom. This releases the dream.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

“We didn't know we would spend the rest of our lives running or we would have slowed down.”
― Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth