By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.

I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.

The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large.

When an elder turns to face the dead, that means he turns away from facing the future and his own retirement in Phoenix, let's say. He turns and finds himself facing the children.

Transcendence or detachment, leaving the body, pure love, lack of jealousy-that's the vision we are given in our culture, generally, when we think of the highest thing. . . . Another way to look at it is that the aim of the person is not to be detached, but to be more attached-to be attached to working; to be attached to making chairs or something that helps everyone; to be attached to beauty; to be attached to music.

The world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them.

The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.