“Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon. ”

“A story is a burden which must be carried with as much care as we carry a sleeping child”

“The best teachers have showed me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly--we only think it does. The motion of drawing back a bow and sending an arrow straight into a target takes only a split second, but it is a skill many years in the making. So it is with a life, anyone's life. I may list things that might be described as my accomplishments in these few pages, but they are only shadows of the larger truth, fragments separated from the whole cycle of becoming. And if I can tell an old-time story now about a man who is walking about, waudjoset ndatlokugan, a forest lodge man, alesakamigwi udlagwedewugan, it is because I spent many years walking about myself, listening to voices that came not just from the people but from animals and trees and stones.”

“If I've learned one thing in the last few days it is that every question does not need to be answered. A story is not true just because of it's literal veracity. It is the message, what it teaches, that counts.”

“The best teachers have shown me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly - we only think it does.”

“If it wasn't for good," my mother says, "we human beings would have been wiped out a long time ago. Either the monsters would have gotten us or we would have killed each other off with greed and jealousy and anger. So we have to believe in good. We have to look for the good in ourselves.”

“Librarians. . . have been my lifelong friends, guides and heroes.”