~Vine Deloria Jr. from THE WORLD WE USED TO LIVE IN

"The society in which we live tends to isolate the facts of experience and then to accept only those facts that support already popular beliefs and dogmas. People discredit or discard facts that call into question the socially acceptable explanations of phenomena."

~Carson McCullen from THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER

"To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from."

~Keith H. Basso from WISDOM SITS IN PLACES

"Wisdom sits in places. It's like water that never dries up. You need to drink water to stay alive, don't you? Well, you also need to drink from places. You must remember everything about them. You must learn their names. You must remember what happened at them long ago. You must think about it and keep on thinking about. Then your mind will become smoother and smoother. Then you will see danger before it happens. You will walk a long way and live a long time. you will be wise. people will respect you."

~Keith H. Basso from WISDOM SITS IN PLACES

""whenever one uses a place name, even unthinkingly, one is quoting ancestral speech -- and that is not only good but something to take seriously"

~Keith H. Basso from WISDOM SITS IN PLACES

"They made a picture of it with words. Now they could speak about it and remember it clearly and well. Now they had a picture they could carry in their minds. You can see for yourself. It looks like its name."

~Keith H. Basso from WISDOM SITS IN PLACES

"As relatives we make each other rich because we help each other in times of need. It has been this way since the beginning. What made you forget this?"

~Sherman Alexie from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven

"That's what Indian time is. The past, the future, all of it is wrapped up in the now. That's how it is. We are trapped in the now."

~Sherman Alexie from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven

"'What's real? I ain't interested in what's real. I'm interested in how things should be.'"

~Sherman Alexie from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven

"It's hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer. Still, Indians have a way of surviving. But it's almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It's the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn't take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins."

~Bret Easton Ellis from AMERICAN PSYCHO

"Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in . . . ."

~Bret Easton Ellis from AMERICAN PSYCHO

"Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?"

~Danica Novgorodoff from SLOW STORM

"I tell you what, gimme blood from the rein, drink from the vine. Or the barrel, or bottle, or wherever the hell it comes from. The way I think of it is: You can gimme a long sleep, satin shoes, and religion when I'm six foot deep."

~Ruldolfo Anaya from BLESS ME, ULTIMA

“’I think most of the things we call evil are not evil at all; it is just that we don’t understand those things and so we call them evil. And we fear evil only because we do not understand it. . . . / Understanding does not come that easy. . .’”

~Jamake Highwater from ANPAO

“You are always grateful and you are always spiteful and you are always saying one thing but doing another, and sometimes I think that you are the most dangerous animals of all.”

~Jamake Highwater from ANPAO

“Sometimes we grow up to be like everyone else, but sometimes we do not. People are always afraid of turning into something unusual, but they must not be afraid. We must be happy with whatever we are becoming. That is the way it is and that is the way it was intended to be.”

~Jamake Highwater from ANPAO

“Old Man said, . . . ‘Ah, it is better to make something than to do nothing. It is better to be something than to be nothing. It is better to know than to not to know. It is better to be than not to be.’”

~Jonathan Safran Foer from EATING ANIMALS

"Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. Society didn't ban child labor because it's impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to a businesses over powerless individuals, it's corrupting. When we walk around think we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. I'm not speculating. This is our reality."

~Jonathan Safran Foer from EATING ANIMALS

"We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a hunk of wood and extreme to treat an animal like an animal."

~Jonathan Safran Foer from EATING ANIMALS

"But nature isn't cruel. And neither are the animals in nature that kill and occasionally even torture one another. Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it."