It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.

There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.

Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.

I made myself into an envelope into which I could thrust my work deep, lick the flap, seal it from everybody.

You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.

You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.

I am always watching for fear of getting feeble and passé in my work. I don't want to trickle out. I want to pour till the pail is empty, the last bit going out in a gush, not in drops.