Blessed are they who listen when no one is left to speak. - Linda Hogan

We are here to rejoice with our full selves. We didn't come here to deprive ourselves. We aren't made for deprivation. We came here with work to do-balancing the forces-and with great capacities for love and joy to fulfill with/in our full selves.

Whatever has ended, whatever has begun, is strong in the air. (p73)

If I look back on my novels as a pattern, every one of them has a return to indigenous knowledge systems, a person who says "okay, I'm not going to be part of this other world, I'm going to return to the original way of thinking about the world." And so, do I think there's an answer to this crisis that we're in? I don't know what it is. If I did would I be here? [laughing]. But it's a step, because the thing is, indigenous people know the environment. Sometimes we're seen as ignorant or as knowing less than people in the Western world. But the truth is that you've lived some place for generation after generation, maybe a thousand years, maybe, like in Australia 60,000 years, some places here 20,000 years. You know everything about that environment, and you don't endanger it because you have to keep it-the new word is - "sustainable." But you do, you have to keep it sustainable.