There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for
life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises....
If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,
not what pays

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.

There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.