My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.

All art is exploitation.

My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.

If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.

All I owe the world is my art.

The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more.

But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic.

Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion.

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.

I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders.

I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.

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

I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian.

I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.

In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions.

My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.

My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage.

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.

Spiritual matters should be private.

The people who loved me when I was seven years old love my books, and the people who didn't like me when I was seven years old don't like my books.

The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same.

There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.

We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.

When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

Writing is a lonely business.

You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.

You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop.

Religious fundamentalists are unaware that freedom of religion necessarily brings with it the freedom to mock religion.

One play can change your momentum forever.

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.

I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.

The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.

We all agree that we've got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they're never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

As a result of my study, I came to the conclusion that a common supreme authority was undesirable.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

I had learned many years ago in private business never to take responsibility without adequate authority; and the new Secretary of Defense, as budgets were sharply cut, quickly found that out.

The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows.

God is the King. In him exists all legal authority.