As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on.

You don't have anything if you don't have the stories.

Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and the animals. They see no life. When they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and the rivers are not alive. the mountains and stones are not alive. The deer and bear are objects. They see no life. They fear. They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves.

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.

Anybody can act violently - there is nothing to it; but not every person is able to destroy his enemy with words.

Time limits are fictional. Losing all sense of time is actually the way to reality. We use clocks and calendars for convenience sake, not because that kind of time is real.