“... instead of spelling stories you spread silence, which was outside the alphabet.”

“I didn't know then that the mind, like the earth, has several layers: a crust, a mantle, a boiling core.”

“Finally the dawn came, the sky fringed with pink, and the sun bright as a coin in a spill of rising red.”

“...the clear water the color of deeply steeped tea, surrounded by cattails and gracile grasses.”

“I never said to myself, I am longing; that feeling lived at a level below language.”

“It is a fundamental misperception," Fouts says to me, "to think human life has more value than any other life form.”

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.”

“The point, I decided, wasn't to have the autobiography or even the memories. The point was who I became when I wrote.”

“The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but act...”

“Understanding the Way of Story as a sacred pattern and a living event. Story can reveal a spiritual path and or the way to healing. Stories become the foundation of health, peacebuilding and vision...”

“Stories nurture our connection to place and to each other. They show us where we have been and where we can go. They remind us of how to be human, how to live alongside the other lives that animate...”

“One afternoon as I just gazed at the topmost branches of those immensely tall trees I began to notice that the uppermost twigs and leaves were lyrical happy dancers glad that they had been apportio...”