“In the chalky trough under the blackboardare lessons dusted and already forgotten.The teacher is squawking away once more,scratching into the dark Welsh tabula rasathe truths so far about God and arithmeticwith the expungible white of fossil shells.”

“People say Jesus Christ is a god, and they pray to him. Likewise, the Navajos have a god. He is an everlasting god who never dies, and we pray to him for everything. We were created from white shell in a sacred, holy way. Part of the white shell was taken and put in our bodies, but no one can see it. White Shell is a god. We pray to her "to give us the invisible white shell shoes, white shell socks, clothing, feathers," and so on. This god is female and is out there, but we cannot see her. ”

“The White House usually followed the seagull theory of management: fly in, squawk and flap and shit, and fly away.”

“The worse the country, the more tortured it is by water and wind, the more broken and carved, the more it attracts fossil hunters, who depend on the planet to open itself to us. We can only scratch away at what natural forces have brought to the surface.”

“Our Welsh teacher thinks he is young. He tells us that the Welsh for skiving in town is ‘mitchio yn y dre’.”

“The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.”