Ancestral stories Quotes

Everybody in my family were great storytellers. My dad and his brothers would just go on and on; they could tell amazing stories. I think it was something to do with the Celtic, oral storytelling tradition. People very much had that propensity towards telling tales.

For people who are coming out of an oral tradition, it is very exciting to get into reading and writing and it is quite interesting how frequently people want to write their own story. Sometimes it is straight history - this is how we came about, how our town was created, a lot of that kind of effort, as soon as literacy came. The first thing you wanted to do was to put something down about who you are or how you are related to you neighbors. Then the next stage would be the stories, the cultural part of the story: this is the kind of world our ancestors made or aspired to.

When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.

To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities.

It was actually fun to write [memoir], because I went back to interview people my parents had taught or who had worked with them, and I learned a lot about them that I hadn't known.

The old folk, time's doting chronicles.

By means of our myths and legends we maintain a sense of what we are worth and who we are. Without them we should undoubtedly go mad.

We tell myths over and over again, lest we forget who we are, lest we not understand that these tales take us through the darkness of our lives, and they put us into a place where you understand what it is to be human.

I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .

Each of us has a family tree full of stories inside of us, Dirk thought. Each of us has a story blossoming out of us.