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.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.

All through my life I never did believe in human measurement. Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size. I know the grand scheme of the world is beyond our brains to fathom, so I don't try, just let it in.

Cold sinks in, there to stay. And people, they'll leave you, sure. There's no return to what was and no way back. There's just emptiness all around, and you in it, like singing up from the bottom of a well, like nothing else, until you harm yourself, until you are a mad dog biting yourself for sympathy. Because there is no relenting.

I spend my time dwelling on revenge and try to deal with the monsters crawling out of the ashes.

I knew each person's delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.

I am at the bookstore a lot, but let my friends, the professional Birchbark Books staff, handle the day in and day out.