“When a basket is woven, each strand of grass, or reed, or wool, or root, must pass repeatedly through human hands, and this, the principle of human touch, is what remains long after the artifact has lost utility or form, something, I think, about life being lived in its physical moment, something, it must be, about grace.”

“The end is brother to the beginning. He who is sent out is obliged to return. No one may resist what must come to pass. No individual may gainsay that which all humans must suffer. A man shall return what he has borrowed. All humans are strangers on this Earth. They must pass from something to nothing. Every man’s life runs along on fast feet: this moment, living; in the turning of a hand, dead. To briefly conclude: every human owes the debt of death and has inherited death. If you weep for your wife’s youth, you are wrong to do so; as soon as a human has life, so soon is he old enough to die.”

“To care about weaving, to make weavings, is to be in touch with a long human tradition. We people have woven, first baskets and then cloth, for at least ten thousand years. This book will give you many ways to become connected with that tradition.”

“Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.”

“Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.”

“I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.”