Paula Gunn Allen > Quotes

“You can learn to enjoy your sensuality in each and every moment. Right now, listening to music, let the music vibrate the pores of your skin. Washing dishes, let the suds bathe your hands. Walking the dog, learn to enjoy being pulled. Every day there are hundreds of things you can enjoy. You can enjoy the leisureliness of a stroll, or the sweat of jogging, or the tang of a breeze. Every moment can be an experience that lets you grow in sensuality. Right now you can feel this paper, this book, this space, the sounds around you, even your own breathing. Being open to all that and with all that will gradually turn you on to life more and more.”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“The root of oppression is loss of memory”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“Feminists too often believe that no one has never experienced the kind of society that empowered women and made that empowerment the basis of rules and civilization. The price the feminist community must pay because it is not aware is necessary confusion, division and much lost time.”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“Wars of imperial conquest have not been solely or even mostly waged over the land and its resources, but they have been fought within the bodies, minds and hearts of the people of the earth for dominion over them.”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“If American society judiciously modelled the traditions of the various Native nations, the place of women in society would be central, the distribution of goods and power would be egalitarian, the elderly would be respected, honoured and protected as a primary social and cultural resource, the ideals of physical beauty would be considerably enlarge (the include "fat", strong-featured women, grey-haired and wrinkled individuals and others who in contemporary american culture are viewed as "ugly")”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“And she remembered the tears that had come from some hidden river in her eyes. Had fallen on her hand, on her lap, on the knife. Silent, they had coursed, beyond her willing, beyond her power to start or stop.”
― Paula Gunn Allen, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows

“She wanted to cry. To scream. To shriek like a crazy wind.”
― Paula Gunn Allen, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows

“I am still alive,
Waking, lonely.”
― Paula Gunn Allen, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows

“Yes, my dear,” she said out loud to herself, “you took quite a fall.” And felt pure amazement at the long time it had taken before she had finally found again the ground.”
― Paula Gunn Allen, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows