When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.

In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.

I am extremely conscious of my tribalism. And when you talk about tribalism, you talk about living in a black and white world. I mean, Native American tribalism sovereignty, even the political fight for sovereignty and cultural sovereignty is a very us versus them. And I think a lot of people in this country, especially European Americans and those descended from Europeans don't see themselves as tribal.

Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.

I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.