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

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

" In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do. "

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

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

" The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet. "

" I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots. "

" All art is exploitation. "

" There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons. "

" In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.' "

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

" What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment. "

" My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage. "

" I look more Indian when I'm serious. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" Writing is a lonely business. "

" I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature. "

" All I owe the world is my art. "

" You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture. "

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

" My father is an amazing man. "

" 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. "