Happy Birthday, Leslie Marmon Silko, born 5 March 1948.
Five Quotes
- Writing can’t change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.
- I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.
- 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.
- To be able to make up stories has been a great gift to me from my ancestors and from the storytellers who were so numerous at Laguna Pueblo when I was growing up. I learned to read as soon as I could because I wanted stories without having to depend on adults to tell or read stories to me.
- But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American writer. She was awarded the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. She is the author of Ceremony.
Source for Image: © Courtesy of Leslie Marmon Silko
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