… this is not a confession, nor is it a way to untangle the roots and find meaning. Rosemary is dead. People live and die. People kill themselves or they get killed. The rest of us live on, burdened by what is inescapable.”
-- Sequoyah (Narration) (Part 1, Chapter 1)

Importance: This quote, from the novel's opening paragraphs, is part of the introduction offered by its narrator (Older Sequoyah) as he prepares to tell the story of a life-defining experience that happened to him when he was younger. He clearly identifies the perspective with which he is telling that story - as he says, without confessing anything, considering the facts of Rosemary's death within the context of both death's inevitability and the inescapability of memory.

Like [my great-grandfather], I too believed in the spirit world. Like him, I tried to see the spirits in everything around me: the trees, the open plains, the sky. I searched for them in...
-- Sequoyah (Narration)  (Part 1, Chapter 1)