What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.

I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.

It's a weird thing. Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear. But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten the reservations were meant to be death camps.

There's this whole notion of being an Indian - the idea that "warrior" is a positive description of us [Indians as native Americans]. When an Indian guy does well, he's a warrior, even now. He could be a computer salesman, but if he does well, he's a warrior. I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

The problem for me with liberals is that we've abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe.

My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.