Tony Hillerman > Quotes

“From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.”
― Tony Hillerman, Coyote Waits

“Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Ghostway

“IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?”
― HIllerman, Tony

“An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.”
― Tony Hillerman

“Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried up. No water. The Hopi, and the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what's beyond human power to change, and then to change the human's attitude to be content with the inevitable." - Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns, 1993”
― Tony Hillerman

“But if I'd known I was going to live so damn long, I'd have taken better care of myself.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Fallen Man

“Beyond meeting simple immediate needs, the Navajo Way placed little worth on property. In fact, being richer than one’s clansmen carried with it a social stigma. It was unnatural, and therefore suspicious.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry.”
― Tony Hillerman, Coyote Waits

“Our society doesn’t have the proper respect for magna cum laude”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“Leaphorn had found that listening carefully to lies is sometimes very revealing of the truth.”
― Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead

“Had a doctor tell me I ought to quit this stuff [bourbon] because it was affecting my eardrums and I told him I liked what I was drinking better'n what I was hearing.”
― Tony Hillerman, Listening Woman

“was not a Navajo concept, this idea of adjusting nature to human needs. The Navajo adjusted himself to remain in harmony with the universe. When nature withheld the rain, the Navajo sought the pattern of this phenomenon—as he sought the pattern of all things-to find its beauty and live in harmony with it.”
― Tony Hillerman, Listening Woman

“that the only goal for man was beauty, and that beauty was found only in harmony, and that this harmony of nature was a matter of dazzling complexity.”
― Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead

“Memorize places,” his uncle had told him. “Settle your eyes on a place and learn it. See it under the snow, and when first grass is growing, and as the rain falls on it. Feel it and smell it, walk on it, touch the stones, and it will be with you forever. When you are far away, you can call it back. When you need it, it is there, in your mind.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Ghostway

“My dad taught us that being late is really rude. It tells the other person you think you’re more important than they are.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Sinister Pig

“She’s an anthropologist … You translate the word from academic into English and that’s what it means: ruins looter, one who robs graves, preferably old ones. Well-educated person who steals artifacts in a dignified manner.” Arnold overcome by the wit of this, laughed, “Somebody else does it they call 'em vandals. That’s the word for competition. Somebody gets there first, gets off with the stuff before archaeologists can grab it, they call ‘em Thieves of Time.”
― Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time

“I hear you’re a medicine man. I heard you are a singer of the Blessing Way. Is that right?” Chee looked slightly stubborn. “Yes sir,” he said. “I would like to ask you to sing one for me,” Leaphorn said.”
― Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time

“In empty country everybody knew everything about everybody. One's inner thoughts seemed to transmit themselves through the clear, dry air without need for verbalizing.”
― Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns

“Navajos did not kill with cold-blooded premeditation. Nor did they kill for profit. To do so violated the scale of values of The People. Beyond meeting simple immediate needs, the Navajo Way placed little worth on property. In fact, being richer than one’s clansmen carried with it a social stigma. It was unnatural, and therefore suspicious.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“where sophistication required the deeper and more difficult knowledge of how one walked in beauty, content in a difficult world?”
― Tony Hillerman, Hunting Badger

“I heard the Watersprinkler playing his flute.”
― Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time

“Like all dry-country people, Leaphorn enjoyed rain—that rare, longed for, refreshing blessing that made the desert bloom and life possible.”
― Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time

“You’re not playing the game,’ Mary Landon said. ‘I told you about me. You’re just telling me about your family.’

The statement surprised Chee. One defined himself by his family. How else? And then it occurred to him that white people didn’t. They identified themselves by what they had done as individuals.”
― Tony Hillerman, People of Darkness

“The white man sees the desolation and calls it a desert, McKee thought, but the Navajo name for it means “Beautiful Valley.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“said. His”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“When the dung beetle moves,” Hosteen Nashibitti had told him, “know that something has moved it. And know that its movement affects the flight of the sparrow, and that the raven deflects the eagle from the sky, and that the eagle’s stiff wing bends the will of the Wind People, and know that all of this affects you and me, and the flea on the prairie dog and the leaf on the cottonwood.” That had always been the point of the lesson. Interdependency of nature. Every cause has its effect. Every action its reaction. A reason for everything. In all things a pattern, and in this pattern, the beauty of harmony. Thus one learned to live with evil, by understanding it, by reading its cause. And thus one learned, gradually and methodically, if one was lucky, to always “go in beauty,” to always look for the pattern, and to find it.”
― Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead

“Leaphorn didn't comment. It was the decision he would have made. Handle it on Navajo time. No reason to rush in there.”
― Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time

“I'm getting to be like a white man," she said. "I'm getting in a hurry for you to tell me what this is all about.”
― Tony Hillerman, Talking God

“make the deer come out where you could shoot them. But maybe the kangaroo rats”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“Did he expect to be in a hurry coming down? Maybe, Leaphorn thought. Maybe that was it. Time. But Navajos didn't hurry. In fact, there was no word in the Navajo language for time.”
― Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way