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The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1) QUOTES

The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1) QUOTES

1 " that's exactly the good thing about the Injun life--you don't have to stop and think about whether or not you're 'happy'--which in my opinionis a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

2 " I, personally, have resolved never to display weakness, to be always strong and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor uncertainty-- no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I see no other way to survive this ordeal. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

3 " Your power as a woman, as a mother, is your medicine, and it saved you. Take your courage in that. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

4 " Don't you know that I laugh because it is my last defense against tears?
"

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

5 " ...how odd to think of one's life not as chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct.
"

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

6 " I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will--a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul...the bloodiest of mutilations. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

7 " As I squat to pee I look upward at the billions of stars and planets in the heavens and somehow my own insignificance no longer terrifies me as it once did, but comforts me, makes me feel a part, however tiny, of the whole complete and perfect universe. . . and when I die the wind will still blow and the stars still shine, for the place I occupy on earth is no more permanent than the water I now make, absorbed by the the sandy soil, dried instantly by the constant prairie wind . . . "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

8 " Ah but Art never fails anyone, magic and medicine may certainly fail, but never Art. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

9 " It was our understanding that we were to be instructing them in the ways of the civilized world, not being made beasts of burden, but, as Helen Flight has pointed out, of what use are table manners to those without tables. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

10 " But others of us believed that the only true happiness our Sara had ever known in her short life on this earth had been among these people. And we wished for her soul to go to the place the Cheyennes called Seano – the place of the dead – which is reached by following the Hanging Road in the Sky, the Milky Way. Here the Cheyennes believe that all the People who have ever died live with their Creator, He’amaveho’e. In Seano they live in villages just as they did on earth – hunting, working, eating, playing, loving, and making war. And all go to the place of the dead, regardless of whether they were good or bad on earth, virtuous or evil, brave or cowardly – everyone – and eventually in Seano all are reunited with the souls of their loved ones. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

11 " can’t help but think once again what a foolish, loutish creature is man. Is there another on earth that kills for the pure joy of it? "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

12 " Good-bye, Harry, wherever you may be … never has it been more clear to me that the part of my life which you occupied is over forever … I could not be further away from you if I were on the moon … how odd to think of one’s life not as chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

13 " elicted "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

14 " My definition of LUNATIC ASYLUM: A place where lunatics are created. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

15 " Franchement vu la façon dont j'ai été traitée par les gens dits "civilisés", il me tarde finalement d'aller vivre chez les sauvages. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

16 " Now we move out again, the horses slipping down off the knoll, following the People, who follow the buffalo, who follow the grass, which springs from the earth. "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

17 " I watch as long as I can and only then do I finally gain the courage to change seats, to give up my dark and troubled past and turn around to face an uncertain and terrifying future. And when I do so the breath catches in my throat at the immensity of earth that lies before us, the prairie unspeakable in its vast, lonely reaches. Dizzy and faint at the sight of it, I feel as if the air has been sucked from my lungs, as if I have fallen off the edge of the world, and am hurtling headlong through empty space. And perhaps I have … perhaps I am … "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

18 " even if it meant early release of a few low-level felons or minor mental defectives "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

19 " A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdu’d,
And neither party loser.” (William Shakespeare,
Henry IV, Part Two, Act IV, Scene 2,
from the journals of May Dodd) "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

20 " We curse the US government, we curse the Army, we curse the savagery of mankind, white and Indian alike. We curse God in his heaver. Do not underestimate the power of a mother's vengeance." (from the journals of Margaret Kelly) "

― Jim Fergus , The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)