Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing.

The first function of violence in Native American literatures is simply to acknowledge that violence is implicit, like gravity and sunlight, in the world and our relations with the world.

Russian literature, like colonial Canadian literature, comes with a lot of landscape backdrop.

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well.

Every Native North American text I've ever grappled with has taught me something important about how to live on the continent where I was born.

Essay on Adam" There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell. Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four: he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him. Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam. The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth, fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth, nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between: he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between these is only an issue of whether the demons work from the inside out or from the outside in: the one theological question.

In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.