When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner.
I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian – that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature.
All art is exploitation.
I don’t have to participate in another culture’s ceremonies in order to respect that culture.
I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.
I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn’t want to be another disappointing Indian.
Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.
I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.
He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.
Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.
But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.
I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.
I’m a poet who can whine in meter.
I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.
Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.
That’s right, I am a book kisser.
Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.
If you care about something enough, it’s going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad. Arnold, get mad.
Summer coming like a car from down the highway.
Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.