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“For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.”
― Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

“You can only look forward to a South Dakota winter if, as with childbirth, remodeling a house, or writing a novel, you're able to forget how bad it was the last time.”
― Dan O'Brien, Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch

“While stationed in Fort Jackson, I experienced racial prejudice for the first time and came to the understanding that humans are not born with prejudice, but learn prejudice. Back home in South Dakota, I only knew one black American. The Scandinavians in my community treated him just like any other Swede; my family considered him a friend. My parents taught me, and I believed that all men are equal because God created all men in His image.

One day during a week end furlough, I boarded a crowded city bus. As I walked down the aisle, I looked for an open seat. Looking towards the rear of the bus, I noticed three huge, young black men sitting on a bench in the back. I decided to squeeze onto the bench with them. As I sat down, a woman said in a very loud voice, "What is that white soldier doing in our part of the bus?"

Neither my life experiences nor my education prepared me for what I experienced walking the streets of Fort Jackson. I saw water fountains for whites only, barbershops for blacks only, and separation for most aspects of Southern living. I discovered that the feelings of prejudice ran deeply amongst many of the people that we encountered. In fact, the blacks even trained separately from the whites during our military preparation, even though we all worked towards defending the United States of America.”
― Omanson, Oliver, Prisoner of War Number 21860: The World War II Memoirs of Oliver Omanson

“It looks a bit like the inside of a cave that has been turned inside out and warmed by the sun.”
― Stefanie Payne, A Year in the National Parks: The Greatest American Road Trip

“Many excellent sites have been proposed as headquarters for the United Nations, but the location we like best is the Black Hills of South Dakota. Staunch advocacy of this site appears from time to time in the appendix of the Congressional Record, and we have been following it, first with interest, lately with enthusiasm. Unquestionably, the seat of the new world league should be Dinosaur Park, near Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills, for in Dinosaur Park stand the cement figures, full size, of the Big Five of Long Ago--Tyrannosaurus rex (35 feet long, 16 feet high), Triceratops (27 by 11), Brontosaurus (90 feet long, weight 40 tons), and a couple of other plug-uglies of the period, all of them in combative attitudes astride a well-worn path. Much can be said for such a bizarre setting. Here let the new halls be built, so that earnest statesmen, glancing up from their secret instructions from the home office, may gaze out upon the prehistoric sovereigns who kept on fighting one another until they perished from the earth.”
― E.B. White, The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters