Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.

Loneliness is an aspect of the land.

Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.

It's a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And, as I say on occasion, it may have to be believed in order to be seen.

Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.