Knowledge is easy to come by. Understanding what you know takes much longer.

Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon.

There is a kind of certainty that seems to characterize Jared Smith's best work, an understanding about place and the flow of spirit that makes you think of Thoreau along with a commitment as fierce as that of Pablo Neruda.

The best teachers have shown me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly - we only think it does.

Native people such as the Cherokees are just as human and complex and real as Americans are, and our nation needs to respect American Indian cultures and traditions.

One of the things I've been taught by Native American elders is the importance of patience, of waiting to do things when the time is right. As an Onondaga friend put it to me, "you can't pick berries until the berries are ripe."

If it wasn't for good," my mother says, "we human beings would have been wiped out a long time ago. Either the monsters would have gotten us or we would have killed each other off with greed and jealousy and anger. So we have to believe in good. We have to look for the good in ourselves.