But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value.

I feel blessed in the knowledge that I probably belong to the last generation that will remember what we call "traditional America."

I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.

Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue.

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

Then the sun broke above the crest of the hills and the entire countryside looked soaked in blood, the arroyos deep in shadow, the cones of dead volcanoes stark and biscuit-colored against the sky. I could smell pinion trees, wet sage, woodsmoke, cattle in the pastures, and creek water that had melted from snow. I could smell the way the country probably was when it was only a dream in the mind of God.

But perhaps age has taught me that the earth is still new, molten at the core and still forming, that black leaves in the winter forest will crawl with life in the spring, that our story is ongoing and it is indeed a crime to allow the heart's energies to dissipate with the fading of light on the horizon.