Transcendence or detachment, leaving the body, pure love, lack of jealousy-that's the vision we are given in our culture, generally, when we think of the highest thing. . . . Another way to look at it is that the aim of the person is not to be detached, but to be more attached-to be attached to working; to be attached to making chairs or something that helps everyone; to be attached to beauty; to be attached to music.

The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.

Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.

The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.

The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing

I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

Adolescents are in just as much trouble in Native America as they are in the white community.