The hard surface of the stone is impervious to nothing in the end. The heat of the sun leaves evidence of daylight. Each drop of rain changes the form; even the wind and the air itself, invisible to our eyes, etches its presence. … All history is taken in by stones.

I am not so different in my history of abandonment from anyone else after all. We have all been split away from the earth, each other, ourselves.

There is always a time to make right what is wrong.

Society, like nature, is one body, really.

I know I am made from this earth, as my mother's hands were made from this earth, as her dreams came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth, the body of the bird, this pen, this paper, these hands, this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

In my lifetime I have seen democracy begin to expand, not only to include those who have been excluded, but to provide a listening arena, a vocabulary, an intelligent reception for stories that have been buried. Not just stories of the disenfranchised and the marginalized, but marginalized and disenfranchised histories even in the lives of the accepted and the privileged.