Writing, of course, it's not all in your head. Not talking about the 'manual' act of typing here either, but that, when your fiction's really working, your whole body's involved, and then some.

This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page.

Craft can get you through ninety percent of a piece, but it's art that carries you at the end.

Life's so much easier when you're not always maintaining two worlds: the one formed of lies, which feels real, and the one you live in, which often feels like lies. So easy to get them confused.

The truth is, poverty's the environment for alcoholism, and the reservations aren't rich. Maybe cleaning people up in fiction is just as dangerous as presenting them unfiltered.

What the readers want is a good story, and what the writers always want to luck into, it's a good story.

Football's another sport I absolutely despise. Along with baseball. Really, for me, basketball's the only real sport, the only one that matters.

Art isn't and shouldn't be responsible. If it is, it isn't functioning as art.

I do love the challenge of screenplays. They're so difficult, such an alien form. It makes them endlessly fascinating. Something I can't keep my fingers out of.

This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: When Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.

Could feel the reservation wheeling around him, changing shape so that he nearly had to vomit, or hold his arms to his head and scream against it all.

On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.

We must treat ideas somewhat as though they were baby fish. Throw thousands out into the waters. Only a handful will survive but that is plenty.

I don't think it's good to be sentimental, so I try not to be.

Education is such a noble profession, its a wonderful way to serve.

Money is a living thing.

Is it my job to feed my neighbour’s child? I don’t think so.

The limits of your imagination are not the boundaries of my universe.

The Mother of Sorrows is my confidante, my teacher, my counselor, and my powerful advocate.

Silence is become his mother tongue.

Fishing is a pleasure of retirement, yet the angler has the power to let the fish live or die.