Write for the love of your art. Someplace down the road, the money, the fame, they'll come, but by that time you won't be thinking in terms of money or fame.

Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.

I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.

Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.

We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.

writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.

THE ALLURE OF Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation.