New Mexico Quotes

“Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.”
― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

“In lieu of letting go of our trauma and rather than healing completely, in my experience, we learn how to carry it and there are some days when it is heavier than others. Some days, I hardly know it is there, distracted as I am by present joys and excitement; while other days, the burden is cripplingly-heavy and I can hardly breathe under the weight of grief.”
― L.M. Browning, To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity

“They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“We can’t deny our journey. We can’t pretend we’re fine when we’re not. All we can do is own it—own our suffering.”
― L.M. Browning, To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity

“Yes, Sangre de Cristo; but no matter how scarlet the sunset, those red hills never became vermillion, but a more and more intense rose-carnelian; not the colour of living blood, the Bishop had often reflected, but the colour of the dried blood of saints and martyres preserved in old churches in Rome, which liquefies upon occasion.”
― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

“When you turn around, you'll see something I bet you've never seen before. If it takes your breath away, then you'll fit in nicely. If you don't feel anything, then maybe you don't belong here.”
― Veronica Randolph Batterson, Daniel's Esperanza

“There is no “letting go.” I would dare to take it further and say there is no healing from trauma. For nearly 25 years, I’ve waited to get over the traumas that have amassed across my life. The pursuit of this healing has felt a great deal like a search for God—for something elusive, divine, and that may or may not exist.”
― L.M. Browning, To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity

“To say I woke up one day and reached a point where I no longer cared about the pains to befall me would be a lie. Nor can I say that I have ever fully forgiven those who willfully did me harm. On a deep, internal battlefield, I wrestle with the thought that I have been robbed of any chance of normalcy by the losses suffered. Therapists and gurus alike tell us to, “Let go or be dragged,” as Zen proverb urges—to forgive for our own sake. But, in my experience, there is no letting go and forgiveness is transient. My inability to be free of it all isn’t for lack of an evolved consciousness on my part. I’ve “done the work” to process it all; rather, it is my irreconcilable, inescapable humanity that causes to clutch the pain close to me.”
― L.M. Browning, To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity

“The black rock was sharp-edged, hot, and hard as corundum; it seemed not merely alien but impervious to life. Yet on the southern face of almost every rock the lichens grew, yellow, rusty-brown, yellow-green, like patches of dirty paint daubed on the stone.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time

“Each of the three cultures in New Mexico during the mid-1800s (Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American) were actively involved in kidnapping each other. As competition and fighting occurred between the three races, cruelty and violence were rampant on all sides. Yet, some captives found kindness among their captors.”
― Noel Marie Fletcher, Captives of the Southwest

“It was a vast old religion, greater than anything we know: more starkly and nakedly religious. There is no God, no conception of a god. All is god. But it is not the pantheism we are accustomed to, which expresses itself as "God is everywhere, God is everything." In the oldest religion, everything was alive, not supernaturally but naturally alive. There were only deeper and deeper streams of life, vibrations of life more and more vast. So rocks were alive, but a mountain had a deeper, vaster life than a rock, and it was much harder for a man to bring his spirit, or his energy, into contact with the life of a mountain, and so draw strength from the mountain, as from a great standing well of life, than it was to come into contact with the rock. And he had to put forth a great religious effort. For the whole life-effort of man was to get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life. To come into the immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator, is the root meaning of religion...”
― D.H. Lawrence

“They were turning now, panning past the Sandias, the black-green crags and rocky faces, the ribbon of road leading to the white crest. Amina looked down on Albuquerque, the light bouncing off the sprawling tile of houses and pools, the cars running along the highways like busy insects. She imagined all of it gone, undone, erased back to 1968, when the city was nothing but eighty miles of hope huddling in a desert storm. She imagined Kamala on the tarmac, walking toward a life in the desert, her body pulled forward by faith and dirty wind.”
― Mira Jacob, The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Billy the Kid shooting all those people over in New Mexico has made gunfighting real popular with the public.”
― Larry McMurtry, The Last Kind Words Saloon

“The remarkable photographs by Craig Varjabedian are not only beautiful but also extremely valuable documents of architecture, culture, and lifestyle . . .”
― Beaumont Newhall, From Adams to Stieglitz: Pioneers of Modern Photography

“With a vintage lens and an eye on regional America, Varjabedian captures both the spirit of place and the sense of enduring culture in the southwest. His imagery comments upon landscape, culture, and how the two influence and imprint each other. Sometimes tinged with religiosity, sometimes humorous, his photographs have an intense clarity that befits his subject: New Mexico.”
― Gerald Peters

“Carlsbad Caverns National Park is best described as living artwork.”
― Stefanie Payne, A Year in the National Parks: The Greatest American Road Trip

“The Perea family is of Arabic origin. The surname Perea originates from the Arabic word “Bariya” and denotes a homeland now located in modern-day Jordan. This surname was phonetically changed in Spanish to “Perea,” which commonly happened with Arabic words absorbed into Spanish—including the word “Albuquerque,” the capital city of New Mexico, which derives from Arabic.”
― Zita Steele, Makers of America: A Personal Family History

“Stallions," Frank said, "they're fightin' over a girl. - DANIEL'S ESPERANZA”
― Veronica Randolph Batterson, Daniel's Esperanza

“New Mexico was supposedly a place with magical healing properties, a place where a hundred years ago tuberculosis patients traveled in droves, like gold prospectors in covered wagons, thinking the dry mountain air would cure them.”
― Willa Strayhorn, The Way We Bared Our Souls

“The USA government states that the New Mexico Trinity nuclear bomb site is still highly radioactive and 'harmless'. It is interesting to note in the era of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) that it is USA government policy that radio frequency (RF) and electricity are also 'harmless'.”
― Steven Magee

“The postmodern notion of "appropriation" is not a good fit. In New Mexico, the "indigenous" is a syncretic fusion of Native American and Hispano American. Just as Pueblo people who are Catholics embrace their traditional religions, Nuevo Mexicanos who wear Metallica T-shirts also attend mass and clean the ditches. The fact that both good and bad aspects of the larger pop culture are welcomed with open arms in New Mexican villages and pueblos does not belie the passion with which local ethnic culture is embraced.”
― Lucy R. Lippard, Nuevo México Profundo: Rituals of an Indo-Hispano Homeland

“One time, a 16-year-old member of Vicente’s group risked his safety trying to save a captive Texas girl, who had been seized by Comanches while taking clothes to wash at a stream near her house.”
― Noel Marie Fletcher, Captives of the Southwest

“We reached New Mexico in March, up through El Paso on a day so clear and cold it looked like you could see all the way north to the Sangre de Cristos on the Colorado border. ... When we saw an eagle turn over the empty road we stopped in a kind of ecstasy and got out to stand on the roadside to breathe and turn in circles and wave our arms. What was this place?”
― Stephen Bodio, Querencia

“You can't buy bullets with food stamps," says Nick Rael, the store owner of the one store in Milagro, New Mexico, when Amarante Cordova peals off four one-dollar stamps and carefully lays them on the counter.”
― John Nichols

“Robyn Tierney is a professional writer and amateur photographer. She is a technical writer and researcher with a knack for creative problem solving and visual communication. Robyn Tierney has a research and non-profit community engagement background and has worked for organizations such as United Way of El Paso County and Baltimore CASH Campaign serving as a type of social worker and professional and technical writer. She has further worked as a grant writer supporting early childhood education initiatives in Doña Ana County. Robyn Tierney also served as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Baltimore City in 2010.”
― Robyn Tierney

“Cuando el movimiento chicano empezó, vimos en Nuevo México, a las Chicana y a otras, trabajando para recuperar las tierras perdidas con la guerra de 1846-48 contra Estados Unidos, miles salieron de las escuelas secundarias para protestar contra el racismo, y muchas se pusieron Boinas Marrones para defender sus comunidades. Nosotros nos unimos a la United Farm Workers como campesinas y apoyamos el boicoteo. Nosotros marchamos en contra de la Guerra de Vietnam el 29 de Agosto de 1970, solo para ser perseguidos, acosadas y maltratadas con los gases lacrimógenos de la policía que incluso mató a tres chicanos ese día.
When the Chicano movement began, we saw Chicanas and others in New Mexico working to get back land lost with the 1846-48 US war, thousands walking out of high schools to protest the racism, and many putting on Brown Berets to defend their communities. We joined the United Farm Workers as campesinas and boycott supporters. Thousands of us marched against the Vietnam war on August 29, 1970, only to be chased and struck down by tear-gassing police who also killed three Chicanos that day”
― Elizabeth Martínez, 500 Years of Chicana Women's History / 500 Años de la Mujer Chicana: Bilingual Edition

“El Grito Del Norte,’ a Chicano newspaper based in Espanola, New Mexico, was born from the revolutionary flames that engulfed the Southwest in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.”
― Enriqueta Vasquez, Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights (Paperback))

“I traveled through New Mexico, USA, and observed problems with one of their police officers.”
― Steven Magee

“New Mexico is home to the first atomic bomb exploded on USA soil.”
― Steven Magee