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Indians endure—both in the sense of living through something so complete in its destructiveness that the mere presence of survivors is a testament to the human will to survive and in the sense of duration or longevity.

You can take the Indian out of Indian country but you can’t take the Indian out of the Indian.

One’s emotions are one’s own; to suggest that others should imitate them is to impose on the personal integrity of others.

When I was small, my mother often told me that animals, insects, and plants are to be treated with the kind of respect one customarily accords to high-status adults. “Life is a circle, and everything has its place in it,” she would say. That’s how I met the sacred hoop, which has been an integral part of my life.

To address a person as “mother” is to pay the highest ritual respect.

Got to give it all up, the pain, the hurt, the anger and make room for lovely things to rush in and fill you full.

She would not break her discipline to comfort herself in a shallow way. Would no more break discipline with her Self than she would her covenant with God.

Take away the miseries and you take away some folks’ reason for living. Their conversation piece anyway.

"I’m available to any and every adventure of the human breath.”

Then M’Dear Sophie always said, “Find meaning where you’re put, Vee.” So she exhaled deeply and tried to relax and stick it out and pay attention.”

Silence. Stillness. To give her soul a chance to attend its own affairs at its own level.

Grandma Dorothy, in an effort to encourage our minds to leap, would tell us, "Of course we know how to walk on the water, of course we know how to fly; fear of sinking, though, sometimes keeps us from the first crucial move, then too, the terrible educations you liable to get is designed to make you destruct the journey entire. So send your minds on home to the motherland and just tell the tale, you little honeys." And my mama-not one to traffic in metaphors usually, being a very scientific woman-would add, "Yeah, speak your speak, 'cause every silence you maintain is liable to become first a lump in your throat, then a lump in your lymphatic system."