When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn’t get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven’t read yet. That’s how I view that I’m rich. I have hardcover books I may never read.
All I owe the world is my art.
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.
I look more Indian when I’m serious.
Every Indian kid has access to MySpace and Facebook. But that doesn’t mean they have access to books and great teachers. This idea about bringing digital tech into schools is great, but once again I’ll say that this is not how people actually learn.
I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.
I’m not a pacifist by any measure, but I’m also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.
Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They’re attracted to more than surface.
The problem for me with liberals is that we’ve abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe.
A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it’s about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.
If I were a doctor nobody would be inviting me to talk to reservations. I’d be a different person. Writers can influence more people.
Because I’m an American, I know there’s all sorts of international folks who would gladly kidnap and behead me.
I don’t think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.
I know a lot about being white – because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn’t live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day.
In order to know somebody through their words, I mean, it has to be an, it has to be a letter, you know? It has to be a long e-mail. It has to be a five-page hand-written letter, you know, it has to be overwhelming and messy and sloppy as humans are.
Also because I’m ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I’m half of whatever they are.
Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn’t know Indians, and he didn’t know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin’ booze.
It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.
What about me?” I asked. “Am I mean?” “You aren’t mean to me with words,” she said. “You’re mean to me with your silences.
But a person can be genocided-can have every connection to his past severed- and live to be an old man whose rib cage is a haunted house built around his heart.