Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountian, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood

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

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

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

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

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

Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.

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

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

It's a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And, as I say on occasion, it may have to be believed in order to be seen.

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

Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls.

Our desires teach us who we are and who we want to become. Our desires shape our stories.

I have always emphasized the willingness to discard.

Life is precious. Life is sacred. And it ought so to be observed.

There are no new fundamentals.

Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.

I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil.

There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.