Quotes from Paulette Jiles

If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place. He had been perfectly serious. That illusion had lasted from age forty-nine to age sixty-five.

She said something in Kiowa in a happy tone. My name is Ay-ti-Podle, the Cicada, whose song means there is a fruit ripening nearby. She gestured back toward the big bay saddle horse and tossed her hair back. It was as if she wanted to include Pasha in this newfound happiness.

You are not thinking of reading law, are you? he said. Oh God no! John Calley stood holding the paint can. I am looking for honest work.

It was in this way he asked people to enter another realm of the mind. Places far away, and mysterious, brought to them by details which they did not understand but which entranced them.

The Captain's hand went to his forehead. A dreadful loss of status in the world. In his world. Loss of reputation and the regard of our fellow persons is in any society, from Iceland to East Indies, a terrible blow to the spirit.

sang as she walked because it was better than weeping.

there is no substitute for walking in the landscape itself, or turning over dusty old pages in the archives of San Antonio.

Curative Waters wagon he threw his shotgun, purchases of tinned butter and dried beef, bacon, two sheepskins, a small box

They rode up the faint marks of the old trace where thousands of sojourners walking and riding both had crossed it and before them the buffalo far back in time. She joined the stream of humanity that had gone down that road, just one more story in a stream of narratives both likely and unlikely that were being told somewhere even now, by someone, in a far place.

In case of attack, this completely inadequate load of bird shot will make a loud noise, if nothing else.

It seemed to him she understood but was not willing to concede they might be on the same side against anyone or anything.

Raiding parties of young men had their own laws and their own universe in which the niceties of civilized warfare did not count and an old man and a young girl were fair game to them, for in the Indian Wars there were no civilians.

so he proceeded with great caution into an alien landscape of the mind and the mind's eye.

He must not be incapacitated. He must not be killed because he knew very well what they would do with the girl. Some people were born unsupplied with a human conscience and those people needed killing.

How many human beings remain in this world, unvanquished and at liberty in plains like these? So few, so few. Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains.

Captain Kidd said, It has been said by authorities that the law should apply the same to the king and to the peasant both, it should be written out and placed in the city square for all to see, it should be written simply and in the language of the common people, lest the people grow weary of their burdens.

They are our great mystery. They are America's great otherwise. People fall back in the face of an impenetrable mystery and refuse it. Yes, they take captives. Sometimes they kill women and old people. But the settlers are people who shouldn't be where they are in the first place and they know it and they take their chances.

Americans are not comfortable with tragedy. Because of its insolubility. Tragedy is not amenable to reason and we are fixers, aren't we? We can fix everything.

That night Samuel sent the guards back to Fort Sill. He would not have uniformed army soldiers anywhere near the agency buildings. He would win over these people with patience and kindness. They would understand that white men were no threat to them and would not attack them, or take their land, and thus they would leave off their raiding.

People did not really understand who they were until they had been tested, and then came the terrible surprise that they did not know who this new person was either.

Loss of reputation and the regard of our fellow persons is in any society, from Iceland to East Indies, a terrible blow to the spirit. It is worse than being penniless and more cutting than the blades of enemies.

He turned the page. He said, This is writing. This is printing. This tells us of all the things we ought to know in the world.

Thoughts have power. They can drift through the air unhindered. Ill will and hatred, the lust for revenge, can detach itself from the person who generates these thoughts if that person has a certain power from some being. Even after the person is dead.

must not be incapacitated, he must not be killed because he knew very well what they would do with the girl. Some people were born unsupplied with a human conscience and those people needed killing.