I Heard the Owl Call My Name Quotes

“Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Past the village flowed the river, like time, like life itself, waiting for the swimmer to come again on his way to the climax of his adventurous life, and to the end for which he had been made.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.' Tagoona asked, 'What is a problem?' and the white man said, 'Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.' Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, 'I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“To join the others was to care, and to care was to live and to suffer.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“I ain't much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I'm an agnostic. I don't know."
"There's a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows how much - only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“For me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world."
"And that, my lord?"
"Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Which was the braver, the one who left, or the one who stayed?”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“What a shame that Christianity had come here!If the white man had not intruded where he was not wanted, where he did not belong, even now protected by the mountains and the river,the village would have remained a last stronghold of a culture which was almost gone.Mark tried to say that no village,no culture can remain static. "I have often thought that if this lively and magnificent land belongs to anyone,it's to the birds and the fish.They were here long before the first Indian and when the last man is gone from the Earth,it will be theirs again.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“When he had first come to the village,it was the future that loomed huge.So much to plan.So much to learn. Then it was the present that had consumed him-each day with all its chores and never enough hours to do them.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“When he looked up some of the friends with whom he had attended college, he realized with a shock that he no longer talked the same language. They spoke freely of their problems and assumed they were his also. Had he noticed how many young people there were now who seemed to find in life no challenge? And how did he handle the growing materialism in which so many people feel no need of faith and consider the church almost an anachronism? And Mark answered that in an Indian village the challenge was obvious to all, to stay alive men had to depend on each other, and that everyone came to church, even the agnostics and the atheists. They came out of respect for the church itself and for the man who served it, and because there were few settlers in a six thousand square mile area who had not been done kindness by the church, its hospital ship, its men, and repaid it.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“You are worrying because day after tomorrow the tribe will be able to buy liquor?" the Bishop asked Mark as he climbed on the plane.
" A little, my lord; I'm afraid some of my best parishioners will end up in the gutter.
" The church belongs in the gutter. It is where it does some of its best work.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Under the clear water they saw the female swimmer (salmon) digging the seed beds with her torn tail, her sides deep red and blue, her fins battered and worn.
"When she has laid her eggs and the waiting males have covered them with milt, she will linger, guarding them for several days," Jim said. "Let's tray another pool." The moved again and saw the end of the swimmer. They watched her last valiant fight for lief, her struggle to right herself when the gentle stream turned her, and they watched the water force open her gills and draw her slowly downstream, tail first, as she had started to the sea as a fingerling. Then they crept away from the pool's edge and returned to Marta, and Mark saw that Keetah's eyes there were tears.
"It is always the same," she said. "The end of the swimmer is sad"
"But, Keetah, it isn't. The whole life of the swimmer is one of courage and adventure. All of it builds to the climax and the end. When the swimmer dies he has spent himself completely for the end for which he was made, and this is not sadness. It is triumph."
"Mark is right, Keetah," Marta said. "It its not sad. It is natural.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“the women sang an ancient hymn to a Supreme Being whose existence had been sensed before the white man had ever come to this land.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Stay with us. Marta has told us. We have written the Bishop and asked that he let you remain here to the end, because this is your village and we are your family. You are the swimmer who came to us from the great sea,” and he put his arms around her and held her close, finding no words to say thank you for the sudden, unexpected gift of peace which they had offered him in their quiet, perceptive way.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“But almost as big as the fact of death was the thought of leaving. How could he return now to that far country he no longer knew, where, while awaiting death, he would be a stranger?”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Marta, something strange happened tonight. On the bank of the river I heard the owl call my name,” and it was a question he asked, an answer he sought.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.” “And that, my lord?” “Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die,” and the Bishop motioned Mark to start the motor, and they went on.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Under a green spruce Marta stood by herself, her eyes on the young vicar. How thin and white he was! How long had it been there—that look on his face she had seen many times in her long life and knew well? It was not the hard winter that had placed it there. It was death reaching out his hand, touching the face gently, even before the owl had called the name.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Keetah had returned to her people, and they knew why and accepted her as if she had not been away, but would he? It was Mark they doubted and he realized, suddenly, even yet he did not know them—perhaps no white man would ever know them—and he knew they knew him better than he did himself.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“There’s a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows much—only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“No woman said, “I am sorry. I have only enough fuel for my own family,” and no man said, “It is true that I have shot a deer. I am freezing what I do not need now. I cannot share with you, friend.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“The tribe is going to trade its simplicity for the shiny gadgetry of our complex world, and it will not be so content, because there is one thing it does not anticipate. The outside world will not accept it easily.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Gordon will do well, and in the end he will be able to live in both worlds,” Mark said. “But if Keetah is not strong enough to return by choice and not by failure, she will never again be able to live in either.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way. Then, when the geese had passed, and the bear and the little hibernating animals had hidden themselves for their long sleep, the white trunks of the alders stood stripped and stark across the river, and man began to emerge, to prove again his capacity for endurance and faithfulness. It was in loneliness the Indians had lived through all the centuries, and it was in loneliness Mark came to know them best.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“How well he had come to know the landmarks; the turn at Broken Island. The last of the lights at Chatham Sound.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“But, Keetah, it isn’t The whole life of the swimmer is one of courage and adventure. All of it builds to the climax and the end. When the swimmer dies he has spent himself completely for the end for which he was made, and this is not sadness. It is triumph.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“follow”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

“The village is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village, and the little white speck that is the mountain goat on Whoop-Szo.”
― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name