IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?

You write for two people, yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated and at least as smart.

Being Indian is not blood as much as it is culture.

I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites.

The highest praise a writer can give another is to say he wishes he had written his book. I wish I had written Forty Words for Sorrow. Giles Blunt has a tremendous talent. If you miss Forty Words for Sorrow, you'll miss one of best novels of 2001.

I try to make my books reflect humanity as I see it.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.