You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?

Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.

Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after - lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again.

In order to purify yourself, you have to understand yourself, Father Trais went on. Everything out in the world is also in you. Good, bad, evil, perfection, death, everything. So we study our souls.

There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author's title, but people of the book, who really must be around.

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge, no fact can deflect their point of view.