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 sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on. You cannot begin with the second word.

He used both hands when he made the bear. Imagine a bear proceeding from the hands of God.

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other. The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated. And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence.

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

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'