“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.”

“I had been given the greatest gift an education could provide: I had a better idea of what it meant to live a good life”

“It's strange, isn't it? The greatest gift you could have given her stemmed from your disgrace. It's enough to make me start going to church.”

“In the canoe, the Indian smiled. Once he paused in a stroke, and rested his blade. For that instant he looked like his own Paddle. There was a song in his heart. It crept to his lips, but only the water and the wind could hear.You, Little Traveler! You made the journey, the Long Journey. You now know the things I have yet to know. You, Little Traveler! You were given a name, a true name in my father’s lodge. Good Medicine, Little Traveler! You are truly a Paddle Person, a Paddle-to-the-Sea!”

“The savagery of the picture strange and alluring, Frank smeared with blood and absolutely at ease. Barbarian, primitive, visceral; if Tony had been given to myth-making, he would have wondered if there could be any more frightening god than one who was simultaneously provider and destroyer.”

“We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.”