Coyote Quotes

“Coyote, who is the creator of all of us, was sitting on his cloud the day after he created Indians. Now, he liked the Indians, liked what they were doing. This is good, he kept saying to himself. But he was bored. He thought and thought about what he should make next in the world. But he couldn't think of anything so he decided to clip his toenails. ... He looked around and around his cloud for somewhere to throw away his clippings. But he couldn't find anywhere and he got mad. He started jumping up and down because he was so mad. Then he accidentally dropped his toenail clippings over the side of the cloud and they fell to the earth. They clippings burrowed into teh ground like seeds and grew up to be white man. Coyote, he looked down at his newest creation and said, "Oh, shit.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Coyote never loses. Because I change the rules of the games my enemies play. What are the rules of your game?”
― Patricia Briggs, Frost Burned

“Look, I'll fight, too. What do you think it is? Bear, coyote...?"
"My brother."
"Your..." Dismay pooled in Mark. She'd just stepped over the line of acceptable craziness. "Oh.”
― L.J. Smith, Daughters of Darkness

“They'll have to bring in Mulder an' Scully, because there ain't no CSI on the planet that'll ever be able to explain this.”
― Kevin Hearne, Hexed

“Mercy has this ... this uncanny ability to go where the trouble is thickest," Adam told him. He had decided a while ago that it wasn't deliberate, and that it had something to do with being Coyote's daughter. He was pretty sure that Mercy was completely oblivious.”
― Patricia Briggs, Silence Fallen

“Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life.”
― Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild

“I am the reality of all coyotes. The archetype. The epitome. You are just a reflection of me.”
― Patricia Briggs, River Marked

“I break things, a lot of things, but I don’t want one of them to be you.”
― Patricia Briggs

“One more month," he said finally. "And then they—and Samuel, too—will just have to get used to it. His eye is the color of a bitch with dark chocolate, worst few years and he leaned forward. "And you will marry me."
I smiled, showing my teeth. "Don't you mean, ‘will you marry me?’"
I meant it to be funny, but his eyes brightened until the gold flecks were swimming in the darkness. "You had your chance to run, coyote. It's too late now.”
― Patricia Briggs, Silver Borne

“I'm not a dog”
― C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman

“Mercy is a smart cookie,” Coyote told him (Adam). “Except when she is not.”
― Patricia Briggs, Shifting Shadows

“Perhaps you are Coyote in disguise and have chosen a spectacularly inappropriate time for a joke.”
― Brandon Nolta, Iron and Smoke

“Coyote power: surviving by one’s own intelligence and wits when others cannot; embracing existence in a mad, dancing, laughing, sympathetic expression of pure joy at evading the grimmest of fates; exulting in sheer aliveness; recognizing our shortcomings with rueful chagrin.”
― Dan Flores, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History

“She kept her ears permanently tuned to the chicken voices outside, so knew immediately when a coyote had crept into the yard, and barreled screaming for the front door before the rest of us had a clue. (I don't know about the coyote, but I nearly needed CPR.) These hens owed their lives and eggs to Lily, there was no question.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“He made love to Porcupine Woman and got his dick shot through with more needles than a pincushion. He'd argue with rocks and the rocks would win.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“As for the coyote, he was nothing like his cartoon icon. He was sleek, fast, healthy and apparently without an anvil or Acme product of any kind.”
― Doug Fine

“The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolfskin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spirtless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely! -so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.”
― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“Well,' he said. 'I seen a lot of coyote sign down here.'
'I ain't surprised,' the old man said. 'They done everything down at our place but come it and set at the table.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“What should I do?' Coyote yelled.
'Cultivate philosophy and run like hell,' said Bear...”
― Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat

“Zeke? Figures." She made a big deal about wiping her hands on her jeans. "Keep your germs to yourself. I have no idea where that tongue has been.”
― Lea Barrymire, Accidentally Yours

“Never dare a Coyote. Ever. It was a law, even the council knew to never dare them. They always accepted a dare. They always triumphed.”
― Lora Leigh, Coyote's Mate

“Coyote power: surviving by one's intelligence and wits when others cannot; embracing existence in a mad, dancing, laughing, sympathetic expression of pure joy at evading the grimmest of fates; exulting in sheer aliveness; recognizing our shortcomings with rueful chagrin. These are the values Old Man America has embodied for thousands of years.”
― Dan Flores, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History

“I didn’t answer the naked hunger in his eyes.”
― Jamie Wyman, Wild Card

“Sam walked cautiously around Pack Leader to see the other side. There were the insect jaws protruding from the matted fur. Two, maybe three of them.
“I came for hunter kill me,” Pack Leader said.
Sam knew this was not the original Pack Leader. Lana had killed that Pack Leader. But whether this was the second coyote to hold the title or some other coyote, he didn’t know. This one had slightly better powers of speech than the first.
“Hunter’s dead,” Sam said.
“You kill.”
“Yes.”
“Kill me, Bright Hands.”
Sam had no sympathy for the coyote. The coyotes had participated in the town plaza massacre. There were bodies buried in the cemetery that had been so badly ripped by coyote teeth that they were unrecognizable.
“The flying snakes cause this?” Sam asked, pointing at the awful parasites.
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
Pack Leader made a purely coyote growl deep in his throat. “No words.”
“Then show us,” Sam said. “Take us to them.”
“Then you burn me?”
“Then I’ll burn you.”
― Michael Grant, Plague

“How am I supposed to feed you?” Drake demanded.
“Darkness say to coyote: don’t kill human. Did not say don’t eat dead human.”
Drake laughed with a certain delight. This Pack Leader was definitely a smarter animal than the original one.”
― Michael Grant, Fear

“È come la metafora del coyote dei cartoni animati che, nella foga di prendere lo struzzo, corre oltre il ciglio del burrone, nel vuoto, ma prosegue, contro ogni legge gravitazionale, e solo quando si accorge che gli manca la terra sotto i piedi cade giù. Probabilmente ce l'avrebbe fatta, se non se ne fosse accorto.”
― Marco Ori, Adriatica crime

“Other times they played some of their own games such as 'going to see the coyote' or ban-madr-che_gio as the Pimas called it. The game was played by very young Pima Indian children.
A group of children line up in a single file with hands holding on to the one in front and marching towards another, usually a boy, lying down pretending to be asleep away from the crowd. When they reach the place where the boy is lying asleep, they march around him singing, alha, alha. When they have marched four times around him, the leader pokes the sleeping boy in the ribs and he jumps up and tries to catch one of the children in the line. The business of the leader of the lines is to prevent the coyote from catching one of the children. The coyote and the leader struggle while the line of children sways back and forth to keep from being caught.
When the coyote grabs one of the children he runs off with him or her and that means he is supposed to have eaten him or her up. When he comes back, another coyote is lying asleep and the game is played over again. The first one caught by the coyote will be the next in turn to lie asleep as the coyote.
We played this game when I was a boy, but the game is not any longer played among the Pima children. Now they play 'London Bridge is Falling Down.'
Sometimes a toka contest is held between two villages. Toka is played only by the women. It is like hockey. Sticks about six feet long were used to throw a pair of small wooden balls tied together about three inches apart with a string of raw-hide. A team is ten or more women on each side.
They pick up the set of balls with the end of the stick and toss it as far as they can. Another on that team will toss it again if she can, and run after her toss, until she gets it over the goal line. The playing field is a hundred steps long and fifty steps wide.
When an argument arises they often use the sticks to settle it.
[page 42, Pima Games]”
― George Webb, A Pima Remembers

“But what, no moral code in these stories? No promise of eternal life, no salvation from death, knowledge of which forms the ancient and oppressive burden of our self awareness? Coyote stories offer up none of these things. They do proffer a firm nod to the “religion” of the wild coyote. Old Man America teaches delight in being alive in a world of wondrous possibilities.”
― Dan Flores, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History

“The beasts feel the force of right and wrong. They know moral courage and cowardice. The moral force was all with the little scared Dog, and both animals seemed to know it. The Coyote backed off, growling savagely, and vowing in Coyote fashion, to tear that Dog to ribbons very soon. All the same, he did not venture to enter the tent, as he clearly had intended to do.”
― Ernest Thompson

“I'm a consoomer. Instead of wall-to-wall Funko Pops, I collect ducks, and I store them all in a pen at night where they can be on display to inspire jealous desire in foxes, coyotes, and Miss Marple.”
― Jarod Kintz, A Memoir of Memories and Memes