Writer Quotes

I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian.

I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.

I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature.

I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.

Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion.

But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic.

All art is exploitation.

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.

My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.

In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions.

I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it.

I look more Indian when I'm serious.

You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.

All I owe the world is my art.

You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.

The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more.

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.

I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.

I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders.

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.

When I was discharged, I attended the University of Paris and met a beautiful Parisian girl, Janine. We soon married and eventually returned to the States.

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.