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.

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.

Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.

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

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.