My very first lessons in the art of telling stories took place in the kitchen . . . my mother and three or four of her friends. . . told stories. . .with effortless art and technique. They were natural-born storytellers in the oral tradition.

"Perhaps she was both child and woman,
darkness and light, past and present,
life and death -- all the opposites
contained and reconciled in her."

"A person can run for years but sooner or later he has to take a stand in the place which, for better or worse, he calls home, do what he can to change things there."

"Sometimes a person has to go back, really back -- to have a sense, an understanding of all that's gone to make them -- before they can go forward."

"Once a great wrong has been done, it never dies. People speak the words of peace, but their hearts do not forgive. Generations perform ceremonies of reconciliation but there is no end."