Joseph Boyden > Quotes

“I say that humans are the only ones in this world that need everything within it...But there is nothing in the world that needs us for its survival. We aren't the masters of the earth. We're the servants.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it's time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren't consequences of a life so easy to live.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.”
― Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road

“Mother Nature was one angry slut. She'd try and kill you the first chance she got. You'd screwed with her for so long that she was happy to eliminate you.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“We are the people birthed from this land. For the first time I can seem something I've not fully understood before, not until now as these pale creatures from somewhere far away stare down at us in wonder, trying to makes sense of what they see. We are this place. This place is us.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“Tout ce que je sais, c'est qu'il n'existe pas de héros dans ce monde. Pas vraiment. Rien que des hommes et des femmes devenus vieux et fatigués qui n'ont plus la force de lutter pour ce qu'ils aiment.”
― Joseph Boyden, Les Saisons de la solitude

“I thought of my mother late that night, after leaving Dorothy, as I followed the moon's path back home across the Moose River. My mother, maybe she was in that moon's light. I didn't know any more, but when I was younger, Iuse to imagine that she was. I'd talk to the moon some nights, and I knew my mother listened. I haven't done that in a long time, me." -Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, ch 13, pg 119”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“But why?" Gabriel asks. "Why do they wish to cause such pain to another human?"
"Why does the Spanish Inquisition do what it does?" I ask. "Why does our own Church burn witches at the stake? Why did our own crusaders punish the Moors so exquisitely?"
Gabriel thinks about this. He knows I don't beg answers for these questions.
"Of course it's easy to say that we mete out punishment to those who are an abomination in God's eyes," I say. "But it's more than that, isn't it? I think we don't just allow torturers but condone them as a way to excise the fear we all have of death. To torture someone is to take control of death, to be the master of it, even for a short time.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“Lots of times growing up, I’d just try to do something myself because I believed that being a boy, and being Indian, I should just know how to do things." -Will Bird, Through Black Spruce”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“On attend quelque chose, et un matin on se réveille et on comprend. C'est simplement la fin qu'on attend.Selon Lisette, c'est ce que les gens à la télé appelle une dépression.”
― Joseph Boyden, Les Saisons de la solitude

“wolves are so frightening not because of their fangs and claws but because of their intelligence, because of their hunger.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“We all fight our own wars, wars for which we’ll be judged. Some of them we fight in the forests close to home, others in distant jungles or faraway burning deserts. We all fight our own wars, so maybe it’s best not to judge, considering it’s rare we even know why we fight so savagely.”
― Joseph Boyden

“I passed the friendship centre and nodded to an old couple on the porch. Kookum smiled back and nodded, a cotton kerchief on her head. Moshum's eyes squinted, too, but never looked straight at me, just glanced my presence once, and that was enough. Old school. I knew that when they stood up to hobble home, he would lead a few feet ahead, and she would follow. They grew up in the bush and still walked the same way, as if the wide road was nothing more than a narrow path through the muskeg and spruce.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“Build it all up, and it all falls down. It all burns down. Everything you need can be taken. Remember that, nieces. Everything you hold dear, it can be taken.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“The world is a different place in this new century, [...]. And we are a different people. My visions still come but no one listens any longer to what they tell us, what they warn us. I knew even as a young woman that destruction bred on the horizon. [...] War touches everyone, and windigos spring from the earth.”
― Joseph Boyden THREE DAY ROAD p 45

“C'est une longue histoire, je crois. (...) Je désirais la lui raconter sans détours, mais je ne la voyais pas ainsi. Les histoires sont toujours pleines de détours.”
― Joseph Boyden, Les Saisons de la solitude

“We are the people birthed from this land. For the first time I can see something I've not fully understood before, not until now as these pale creatures from somewhere far away stare down at us in wonder, trying to make sense of what they see. We are this place. This place is us.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“I say that humans are the only ones in this world that need everything within it ... But there is nothing in this world that needs us for its survival. We aren't the masters of the earth. We're the servants.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“Your grandfather was a hero in a war, girls. He wasn't a bad man or a weak man. Maybe he was too old to have a second family, a second wife and your mother and me, so many years after he lost his first. Maybe he was too old to fight anymore, and that's why he let me be taken away. I've thought about this for years and years. All I know is there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“So much is learned by seeing how well or how poorly someone accomplishes a job he dislikes.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“Moosonee. End of the road. End of the tracks. I can sense
it just beyond the trees, nieces. It’s not so far away through
the heavy snow. That place, it can be a sad, greedy town.
You fall into your group of friends, and that’s that. Friends
for life, minus the times you are enemies. Not too many
people around here to choose from for friends, or for
enemies. So choose right. In this place, your people will die
for you. Unless they’re mad at you. If you are on the outs
with a friend, all bets are off. You don’t exist.”
― Joseph Boyden

“There's something in this particular practice that can teach us Cristians a powerful lesson, that we may see so vividly our own wretched state, that it's not this world we should cherish but the promise of the next.”
― Joseph Boyden

“Nature's full of things that aren't good or bad. They just are. Storms, sun, lightning, animals. There are a lot of forces that are neutral, but when they fall into certain hands they can become good or bad. It depends on how the user wants to use them. You can train a dog to be friendly or mean.”
― Joseph Boyden, Born With A Tooth

“In matters of the spirit, these sauvages believe that we all have within us a life force that is similar, if you will, to our own Catholic belief in the soul. They call this life force the orenda.”
― Joseph Boyden, The Orenda

“It is one thing to talk to entertain, Xavier," he told me. "But it is a more powerful menewawin, a more powerful gift, to talk in order to teach. If you become a good teacher, you are on your way to healing some of the things that have gone wrong.”
― Joseph Boyden, Born With A Tooth