“I thought of my mother late that night, after leaving Dorothy, as I followed the moon's path back home across the Moose River. My mother, maybe she was in that moon's light. I didn't know any more, but when I was younger, Iuse to imagine that she was. I'd talk to the moon some nights, and I knew my mother listened. I haven't done that in a long time, me." -Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, ch 13, pg 119”

“Lots of times growing up, I’d just try to do something myself because I believed that being a boy, and being Indian, I should just know how to do things." -Will Bird, Through Black Spruce”

“Mother Nature was one angry slut. She'd try and kill you the first chance she got. You'd screwed with her for so long that she was happy to eliminate you.”

“When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.”

“There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?”

“We children sat transfixed before that moon our mother had called forth from the waters. When the moon had reached its deepest silver, my sister, Savannah, though only three, cried aloud to our mother, to Luke and me, to the river and the moon, "Oh, Mama, do it again!" And I had my earliest memory.”

“And an unaware witch means a witch who doesn't know she's a witch, and because she's a women that makes her double trouble. Never trust a women." My mothers a women," I said, suddenly feeling a little angry, "and I trust her."Mothers are usually women," said the Spook. "And mothers are usually quite trustworthy, as long as your their son. Otherwise look out!”