I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.

I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing Y.A.

My parents banned nothing, though the Christian fundamentalists in my tribe held book-and-record burnings every now and again. So, yes, fundamentalist assholes can also be brown-skinned.

The people who loved me when I was seven years old love my books, and the people who didn't like me when I was seven years old don't like my books.

The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.

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

I don’t want long hair, I don’t want short hair, I don’t want hair at all, and I don’t want to be a girl or a boy. I want to be a yellow and orange leaf some little kid picks up and pastes in his scrapbook.