Jim Fergus quotes:

that's exactly the good thing about the Injun life--you don't have to stop and think about whether or not you're 'happy'--which in my opinionis a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks

The Sierra, a region so quiet and pristine that we have the sense of being the first human beings ever to set foot in it. We fall silent ourselves in its midst, as if conversation in a place of such primeval solitude would be like talking in church.

Yet only the atrocities of the conquered are referred to as criminal acts; those of the conqueror are justified as necessary, heroic, and even worse, as the fulfillment of God's will.

...how odd to think of one's life not as chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct.

Don't you know that I laugh because it is my last defense against tears?

Your power as a woman, as a mother, is your medicine, and it saved you. Take your courage in that.