the ancient people perceived the world and themselves within that world as part of an ancient continuous story composed of innumerable bundles of other stories.

To be able to make up stories has been a great gift to me from my ancestors and from the storytellers who were so numerous at Laguna Pueblo when I was growing up. I learned to read as soon as I could because I wanted stories without having to depend on adults to tell or read stories to me.

I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.

Writing cant change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.

Night. Heavenly delicious sweet night of the desert that calls all of us to love her. The night is our comfort with her coolness and darkness. On wings, on feet, on our bellies, out we all come to glory in the night.

The Indian wars have never ended in the Americas.

But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

the material world and the flesh are only temporary - there are no sins of the flesh, spirit is everything!

The truth of course was otherwise, but Lecha had never felt she owed anyone the truth, unless it was truth about their own lives, and then they had to pay her to tell them.

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

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.

Time limits are fictional. Losing all sense of time is actually the way to reality. We use clocks and calendars for convenience sake, not because that kind of time is real.

The American public has difficulty believing ... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case.

But sometimes what we call 'memory' and what we call 'imagination' are not so easily distinguished.

the snow ... came in thick tufts like new wool - washed before the weaver spins it.

Moonflowers blossom in the sand hills before dawn, just as I followed him.