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.

How self-centered, how arrogant... Imagine the awesome privilege of living in a society where you get to choose what you eat at each and every meal. When I was a kid, I was a vegetarian and a vegan for long stretches... I was a commodity cheese-atarian.

Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.

Let us now celebrate the literary allusion.

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.

I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito.