“The movement known as the Ghost Dance first appeared around 1870… soon after the Union Pacific Railroad completed its first transcontinental run. …that event inspired the vision of the prophet Wodziwob, who declared that a big train was coming to bring back dead ancestors… a cataclysm would swallow up all the whites and leave behind their goods for his followers.”

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.”

“If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism…. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.”

“[when the ghost woman appears behind him] "WWWWhoa-kay, back up there, lady…"”

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until…”

“After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from his favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left-back. I would love him to save me a place in his team - George Best that is, not God.”

“The Conservative Party in the House of Commons has played ball with Paisley for 18 months, during which he has sat among them on the government benches but voted against them…For was he not the secret weapon of those who wanted to send Ulster the way of white Rhodesia? … That is why the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Humphrey Atkins, and the Northern Ireland Office spent the first year-and-a-half of this Parliament building up Ian Paisley and whispering to him and to everybody else that he was going to be the big white chief under a new set-up which they planned to introduce. They recognized in him a man with no dedication to the Union, a man who would abuse the Parliament of the Union to its face and declared that he owed it no allegiance…He is afraid for his own skin, and afraid of the fringe men of violence on whose backs he would fain ride, provided he can distance himself from them when serious trouble looms. The old adage holds good; all bullies are cowards, and most cowards are bullies. That is the last trait which completed the portrait of the man who the enemies of the Union are hoping against hope will put them in business again.”

“The distance that the dead have gone
Does not at first appear;
Their coming back seems possible
For many an ardent year.

And then, that we have followed them
We more than half suspect,
So intimate have we become
With their dear retrospect.”

“In 1680 the Pueblo Indians, led by a prophet named Popé who had been living in Taos, expelled the Spaniards... The god of the Spaniards was declared dead, and the religious ways came out into the open again. …But when Popé attempted to become the unchallenged leader of all the Pueblo Indians, the movement collapsed. …The Pueblo confederation soon broke apart and the people warred among themselves. In 1692 the Spaniards marched back to victory.”

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”