the ancient people perceived the world and themselves within that world as part of an ancient continuous story composed of innumerable bundles of other stories.

To be able to make up stories has been a great gift to me from my ancestors and from the storytellers who were so numerous at Laguna Pueblo when I was growing up. I learned to read as soon as I could because I wanted stories without having to depend on adults to tell or read stories to me.

For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke... They saw his outline but they did not realize it was hollow inside.

Things which don't shift and grow are dead things.

The story was the important thing and little changes here and there were really part of the story. There were even stories about the different versions of stories and how they imagined the differing versions came to be.

But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

relationships. That's all there really is. There's your relationship with the dust that just blew in your face, or with the person who just kicked you end over end. ... You have to come to terms, to some kind of equilibrium, with those people around you, those people who care for you, your environment.