A dozen things talking skulls have said:
"There is no use for you to cry, for you are with me now, and you must begin to clean me."
—told by storyteller White Sun, whose grandfather was the medicine-man of the Kitkehahki (The Pawnee Mythology, collected by George Dorsey, 1906).
"Is it just today or yesterday that I have been here?"
"I was dreaming. ...I dreamt that I threw my own body down. I dreamt that I was bounding about, merely a skull."
—Yana Texts by Edward Sapir, 1910
"There is as much fire beneath our feet and heads as the sky is distant from the earth."
"Shall I remain a skull for ever, or shall I take my own true form?"
"Why do you spurn me? I once was living, I now am rolling in the dust; your fate will be like mine."
—Smoke by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, 1883
"Tongue brought me here; tongue will bring you here too."
"I have fully enjoyed valuable treasures in my life time—and even after I died."
The skull spoke. Muffled. Sepulchral. "Trick or treat!"
"Foolishness killed me, and cleverness has killed you."
—Research in African Literatures, 1977
"We ask you to look with the eyes of your soul and to engage with the essential. Regaining your luminous nature is a possibility today for all who dare to take the leap."
"I am here to destroy all human beings."
Our illustration is from Washington University's 1922 yearbook.
