I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.

All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new.

If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.

I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.

Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.