“... Well, some day i'm going to get in with that wild artistic group. It's the only thing that makes this town different.""The 'wild artistic group,' as you put it, has an average age of fifty-seven, and most of us have heart disease and bladder trouble...”

“I walked her to her door and said good night, while Romeo waited. "I'll see you in the morning," I said, 'when the barking dogs arouse the sleeping tepee village and the smell of roasting coyote is in the air.""My sisters will prepare me," she said. "I shall come to your wickiup in my white doeskin dress and lose my innocence on your buffalo robe.""I will give you little ornaments to put in your hair, black as the crow's wing. I will give you red flannel and a looking-glass so that you may groom yourself.""I'd also like to have a little spending money and a charge account at Wormser's," she said."Good night, Maiden Who Walks Like a Duck.""Good night, Warrior Who Chickens Out at the Least Sign of Trouble.”

“I'm not ancient, darling. I'm only fifty. And when it comes to sex a woman of fifty can often outlast a man half her age.”

“Laughing isn't wrong if it's done out of happiness. Dreaming is essential because it gives us wings, and forgetting...well, there's a difference between living and forgetting.”

“To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most—suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another—are defeated. This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines.”

“I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready”

“Wild animals almost never die of old age: starvation, disease, or predators catch up with them long before they become really senile. Until recently this was true of man too. Most animals die in childhood, many never get beyond the egg stage. Starvation and other causes of death are the ultimate reasons why populations cannot increase indefinitely.”