Quotes from Tony Hillerman

just another of the thousands of jobs rural policemen get solving little social problems among people turned eccentric by an overdose of dramatic skyscapes, endless silence and loneliness.

It seemed an odd thing to put on a tombstone, but then everything about the white man's burial customs seemed odd to Chee. The Navajos lacked this sentimentality about corpses. Death robbed the body of its value.

You're not playing the game,' Mary Landon said. 'I told you about me. You're just telling me about your family.' The statement surprised Chee. One defined himself by his family. How else? And then it occurred to him that white people didn't. They identified themselves by what they had done as individuals.

I heard the Watersprinkler playing his flute.

I'm remembering something else, too. That remark you made to me about Shakespeare. I asked the woman at the library about Othello, and she got me a copy. He was just about as stupid as me. But with me, I didn't have someone egging me on. I did it to myself. Looking for a treasure when I already had one.

Chee picked up his hat. "It's not," he said. "Lot of good people in the Bureau. It's just they let the FBI get way too big. And the politicians get the promotions, and so they're the ones making the policies and calling the shots instead of the bright ones. And

This is why I climb, Buchanan thought. To get so far away from Stapp's "surface of the earth" that I can't even hear it. But Whiteside climbs for the thrill of challenging death. And now he's out about thirty yards. It's just too damn risky.

TWISTING THE TAIL OF A COW will encourage her to move forward," the text declared. "If the tail is held up over the back, it serves as a mild restraint. In both cases, the handler should hold the tail close to the base to avoid breaking it, and stand to the side to avoid being kicked.

Know that it is hard for the people to trust outside their own family. Even harder when they are sick. They have pain. They are out of harmony. They see no beauty anywhere. All their connections are broken. That is who you are talking to. You tell them the Power that made us made all this above us and around us and we are part of the Power and if we do as we are taught we can bring ourselves back into hozho. Back into harmony. Then they will again know beauty all around them.

A Navajo, like a rancher anywhere, would need access to water, to grazing, to a road, and above all a soul-healing view of—in the words of one of the curing chants—"beauty all around you.

Someone had been digging. Someone had been looting. A pot hunter. A Thief of Time.

Rather quickly, Officer Gorman had proved he was the sort of man who – as Leaphorn's grandmother would have said – counted the grass and didn't see the grazing.

The trees at Tse Bonito Park were yellow, the roadsides were streaked with the purple of the last surviving October asters, and overhead the sky was the dark, blank blue.

What was it about white men that caused them to plant grass in places where grass couldn't possibly grow without them fiddling with it all the time?

But where was home for this boy who had hunted heaven?

sounding cheerful, Ms. Manuelito sounding sad.

Ernesto Cata was dead but the Little Fire God lived. The Badger Clan had provided another of its sons to personify this eternal spirit.

You notice anything about the skeletons?" Leaphorn was squatting now in the shallow trench, examining bones. "Somebody seemed to be interested in the jawbones," Chee said.

Until you ask why bury a bucket when there's a million places you could hide it. And hoarding wealth isn't part of the Navajo Way anyway. There're always kinfolks who need it.

That made him and Highhawk related on their less important paternal side.

I imagine he'd blow his horn when he threw the hay over. Cows are curious. Worse than cats. They'd come to see about it. And they've got good memories. Do it about twice, and when they hear a horn they think of good alfalfa hay. Come running.

The way he understood hozho was hard to put into words. "I'll use an example. Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried out. No water. The Hopi, or the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what's beyond human power to change, and then to change the human's attitude to be content with the inevitable.

owned by some corporation that

Mr. Leaphorn," the man said. "Papa said you coming.