Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.

I am at the bookstore a lot, but let my friends, the professional Birchbark Books staff, handle the day in and day out.

Can you stop your mother from singing to you? Who would do such a thing?

I thought how we might have to yell to be heard by Higher Power, but that's not saying it's not there. And that is faith for you. It's belief even when the gods don't deliver.

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge, no fact can deflect their point of view.

I have brothers and was a tomboy, if that's still a designation. It wasn't a stretch for me to think and write as a 13-year-old boy - it is freeing.

I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.