Ruby Grace

“I remember the words of Bill Tall Bull, a Cheyenne elder. As a young person, I spoke to him with a heavy heart, lamenting that I had no native language with which to speak to the plants and the places that I love. 'They love to hear the old language,' he said, 'it's true.' 'But,' he said, with fingers on his lips, 'You don't have to speak it here.' 'If you speak it hear,' he said, patting his chest, 'They will hear you.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species

“The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be human.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species

“...humor is deliberately built into the syntax. Even a small slip of the tongue can convert "We need more firewood" to "Take your clothes off.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species

“It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentric and full of anger, and I wondered what form the anger would have taken. Would I have taken up causes, or would I have simply knifed somebody?”
― Joan Didion, South and West: From a Notebook