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.

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.

Her name is Ago, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America.

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

Anything is bearable if you can make a story out of it.

The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance they could see.

In the beginning was the word, and it was spoken.