For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.

If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe.

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.

Loneliness is an aspect of the land.

There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there.