“Father Arnold finished the ceremony and asked if anybody had any final words for the dearly departed."Final words?" Chess asked, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop talking about this.”

“Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked."He's gone."The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house.”

“You can do it." Coach said. "I can do it." "You can do it." "I can do it." Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together. (189)”

“So I heard the boom of my father's rifle when he shot my best friend. A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.”

“Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.You can do it.I can do it.Let's do it.”

“That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty.”

“And finally this, when the sun was falling down so beautiful we didn’t have time to give it a name, she held the child born of white mother and red father and said,’ Both sides of this baby are beautiful’.”