Top 26 Quotes & Sayings by Joseph Boyden

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of Irish and Scottish descent. He also claims Indigenous descent, but this is widely disputed. Boyden is best known for writing about First Nations culture. Three Day Road, a novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I, was inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. Boyden's second novel, Through Black Spruce, follows the story of Will, son of one of the characters in Three Day Road. The third novel in the Bird family trilogy was published in 2013 as The Orenda.

Canadian - Novelist | Born: October 31, 1966

Source: Wikipedia

There were incredibly complex societies already existing in North America long before Europeans arrived. So many people think that before European contact it was just Natives huddling around a fire, waiting for civilization to come save them. But that was not the case.

Joseph Boyden

During World War I the Canadians were the shock troops. In many historical cases, Canadians have been very proficient at killing, and doing what we have to in order to survive. But no one wants to acknowledge that fact.

Joseph Boyden

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

People will say that Canada, unlike America, was not birthed from violence. But I want to say, "What are you talking about?" It's just not true.

Joseph Boyden

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

Fascinating, often hilarious, always devastatingly truthful, The Inconvenient Indian is destined to become a classic of historical narrative. For those who wish to better understand Native peoples, it is a must read. For those who don't wish to understand, it is even more so.

Joseph Boyden

The beliefs of Native people are no less powerful or important just because they focus on a different "form of magic."

Joseph Boyden

Canada and America are very, very different. It's true that we share a language and many customs. But Americans have a very different view of the world.

Joseph Boyden

I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.

Joseph Boyden

I'm fascinated by the magic realism used by many writers. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the Indian experience. It's a very different way of viewing the world.

Joseph Boyden

From a craft standpoint, telling a story in the first-person present tense over the course of 500 pages is a daunting challenge.

Joseph Boyden

There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?

Joseph Boyden

There's the concept that dreams are as important - if not more important - than reality. The attention that one pays to those things in the shadows is very much a part of the Indian experience.

Joseph Boyden

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

Joseph Boyden

Compared to Americans, Canadians are often more gentle in their approach to things. They're much more apologetic. There's less room for conflict.

Joseph Boyden

I'm intrigued by the classic Greek tragedies, as well as by the idea of the Greek chorus.

Joseph Boyden

I'm a writer. I should be allowed to speak about my writing at times. And I'm really excited to speak about that. There's nothing I am shameful of or anything else in my novels. They are my children and I'm happy to speak about my children.

Joseph Boyden

America seems to celebrate its more violent past, but Canada doesn't like to recognize those things. The willingness to accept the existence of violence separates our two countries.

Joseph Boyden

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

The history needs to serve the story, not the story the history. But at the same time you can't stray too far.

Joseph Boyden

We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.

Joseph Boyden

Being a mixed-blood person of Ojibway and European ancestry, I always found that I only heard one side of the story - that was the conquerers' side, the side of the French Jesuit missionaries that came to live in what is now Ontario.

Joseph Boyden

We aren't the masters of the earth. We're the servants.

Joseph Boyden

Sometimes, it's not getting what we want that offers us the most important Lessons

Joseph Boyden

There's a few scholars that object to how the italicized sections suggest that Native people are to take some part in the blame for how colonization occurred. But I say, "Yes they are." Not nearly as much blame as the colonizers, of course. But we are not just victims. I hate this idea that we are all just victimized and oppressed and etcetera etcetera. It's dehumanizing in its own way.

Joseph Boyden

I believe truly that Canada is a living history and we're going through some of the most important time in this country's short 150 years.

Joseph Boyden