Writing can't change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.

This feeling was their life, vitality locked deep in blood memory, and the people were strong, and the fifth world endured, and nothing was ever lost as long as the love remained.

I don’t make outlines or plans because whenever I do, they turn out to be useless. It is as if I am compelled to violate the scope of any outline or plan; it is as if the writing does not want me to know what is about to happen.

You damn your own soul better than I ever could.

There was not, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the Europeans’ own definitions and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land.

He liked the way she talked. There was something in her eyes too. He saw it the first time when she had said, ‘I’ve seen you before many times, and I always remembered you.’ Josiah could not remember ever seeing her before, but there was something in her hazel brown eyes that made him believe her.

In that hospital they don’t bury the dead, they keep them in rooms and talk to them.

That was the responsibility that went with being human, old Ku’oosh said, the story behind each word must be told so there could be no mistake in the meaning of what had been said; and this demanded great patience and love.

He cried the relief he felt at finally seeing the pattern, the way all the stories fit together – the old stories, the war stories, their stories – to become the story that was still being told. He was not crazy; he had never been crazy. He had only seen and heard the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distances and time.

Anybody can act violently – there is nothing to it; but not every person is able to destroy his enemy with words.