Quotes from Margaret Craven

Past the village flowed the river, like time, like life itself, waiting for the swimmer to come again on his way to the climax of his adventurous life, and to the end for which he had been made.

There is a strange depression that hangs over every little town that is no longer in the mainstream of life.

Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way.

He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken.

We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.' Tagoona asked, 'What is a problem?' and the white man said, 'Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.' Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, 'I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.

Past the village flowed the river, like time, like life itself, waiting for the swimmer to come again on his way to the climax of his adventurous life, and to the end for which he had been made.

To join the others was to care, and to care was to live and to suffer.

There was nothing but a lonely magnificence of sea and islands

When he had first come to the village,it was the future that loomed huge.So much to plan.So much to learn. Then it was the present that had consumed him-each day with all its chores and never enough hours to do them.

I ain't much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I'm an agnostic. I don't know." "There's a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows how much - only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.

For me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world." "And that, my lord?" "Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die.

Already the rain had become an element of life like the air Mark breathed, and when it stopped, he missed it somehow, and found himself listening for the drip, drip, drip that seemed now a necessary and comforting component of his life.

You are worrying because day after tomorrow the tribe will be able to buy liquor?" the Bishop asked Mark as he climbed on the plane. " A little, my lord; I'm afraid some of my best parishioners will end up in the gutter. " The church belongs in the gutter. It is where it does some of its best work.

How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?

Which was the braver, the one who left, or the one who stayed?

I like young people. I think it is time my country does what the Indians of Kingcome are doing. We must return to our own roots, our own safety and integrity, and I think this is the beginning to occur. Our lives depend upon it.