The Streetlight Outside My House Shines On

I Write Books For Teenagers Because I Vividly Remember What It Felt Like To Be A Teen Facing Everyday And Epic Dangers. I Don't Write To Protect Them. It's Far Too Late For That. I Write To Give Them Weapons-in The Form Of Words And Ideas-that Will Help Them Fight Their Monsters. I Write In Blood Because I Remember What It Felt Like To Bleed.

There Are All Kinds Of Addicts, I Guess. We All Have Pain. And We All Look For Ways To Make The Pain Go Away. (107)

Like Any Good Shaman, Professional Baseball Player, Or Politician, My Mother Always Answered Questions With Questions.

Indians Have No Monopoly On Environmentalism. That's One Of The Great Myths. But We Were Subsistence Livers. They're Two Different Things. Environmentalism Is A Conscious Choice And Subsistence Is The Absence Of Choice. We Had To Use Everything To Survive. And Now That We've Been Assimilated And Colonized And We Have Luxuries And Excesses, We're Just As Wasteful As Other People.

I Felt So Conflicted About Having Fled The Rez As A Kid That I Created A Whole Literary Career That Left Me There.