“I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lighting bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.”
“I flung my jacket over my shoulder, Frank Sinatra style. I was full of references. He was full of light and shadow. … He took twelve pictures that day. Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. ‘This one has the magic,’ he said. When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.”
“I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of our handmade world, saying, ‘I choose Earth.'”
“‘Patti’, he drawled, ‘you got famous before me.'”
“Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply. I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortés.”