Margaret Coel > Quotes

“[Faith] was something other than an intellectual exercise. There were no words, no lofty concepts, that could take away the pain. Faith was living with the pain.”
― Margaret Coel, The Eagle Catcher

“[The past] has a way of hanging around, demanding we understand it and weave it into ourselves so that we can go on.”
― Margaret Coel, The Eagle Catcher

“We live far away from our families and everything else that other people hold dear, and we follow a charismatic leader.” “So now you’re comparing Orlando to Jesus Christ?”
― Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer

“To wonder is to begin to know”
― Margaret Coel, The Eagle Catcher

“Arapahos had followed the buffalo, pitched villages in the lee of the mountains, ridden out like itinerant shop-keepers to trade buffalo robes and blankets with other Indian tribes. Intelligent, logical, peaceful, that was the Arapahos. “The businessmen of the plains,” the first white traders had called them.”
― Margaret Coel, The Eagle Catcher

“They made him a priest, he'd thought, the people who needed him. Just as sick people made someone a doctor and people in need of justice made someone a lawyer. He drew his priesthood from the people.”
― Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer

“There was no family to reclaim. There were only individuals trying to make their way….”
― Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer

“They followed her into an L-shaped waiting room, slabs of beige tile on the floor, and two rows of metal, straight-back chairs against the green walls. Like a million waiting rooms, arranged for people who have nothing, really, to wait for.”
― Margaret Coel, The Story Teller

“had been parishioners at St. Francis Mission longer than he had been here. He had known Ned since he was a kid, brown face and big teeth, playing first base on the Eagles baseball team. Ned had moved to Jackson Hole for a while, but then he’d come home. He’d stopped by the mission twice, something on his mind each time, Father”
― Margaret Coel, The Spider's Web

“You couldn't hide here, with the earth stretching into the sky. He was grateful for that. Your shadow was always alongside you.”
― Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer

“He loved the music, the sense of space: the Wind River Mountains floating ahead in the haze, the sky an enormous blue bowl inverted over the earth, and the sun patterning the wild grasses and clumps of sagebrush on either side of Seventeen-Mile Road.”
― Margaret Coel, The Dream Stalker

“There’ll be a demand for campgrounds and hiking trails.”
― Margaret Coel, The Drowning Man

“she might have died in the accident. But there was nothing—nothing—a priest could offer her.”
― Margaret Coel, Buffalo Bill's Dead Now

“Vicky didn’t say anything for a moment. “Red Cliff Canyon is a sacred area,” she said.”
― Margaret Coel, The Drowning Man

“There was the loud thump as the truck clipped the rear of the Jeep and sent it fishtailing over the dusty ground,”
― Margaret Coel, The Drowning Man

“And one of the other routes we looked at crosses a wetlands. The bird lovers would be out in force.”
― Margaret Coel, The Drowning Man

“They buy ’em here ’cause it’s cheaper. You know how rich people are. Money sticks to their hands, ’cause it’s the most important thing in the world to ’em.”
― Margaret Coel, The Ghost Walker

“miles per hour, eighty-five, and still the sedan stayed behind”
― Margaret Coel, Buffalo Bill's Dead Now

“This was the toughest part of being a priest, bearing the bad news that no one wanted, like a ragpicker, appearing at the door with a burden of trash. And with the trash – words, that was all he had.”
― Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer

“road jogged west. Another mile, and he pulled up in the”
― Margaret Coel, The Dream Stalker

“Whatever talent she’d had for forgiveness was gone.”
― Margaret Coel, The Shadow Dancer

“Fifteen years in prison! That’s eternity for an Arapaho.”
― Margaret Coel, The Drowning Man

“He would go to Vera and deliver the horrible news and comfort the poor woman with his prayers and platitudes and tell her how God was with her, no matter what. She knew the words by heart; there had been times when he had used them on her, and she wondered if God had been with T.J. when they were cutting his arms to the bones.”
― Margaret Coel, Wife of Moon

“Synthetic?’ She glanced at the fiery stones. Was nothing what it seemed? Was everything a symbol of another reality?.”
― Margaret Coel, The Thunder Keeper

“It was still with them, the century-old futility of trying to protect what was theirs while watching it being taken away. It clung to her people like a stain that couldn’t be removed.”
― Margaret Coel, The Drowning Man