Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.

Coach said. "the quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor".

I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.

If it's fiction, then it better be true.

I learned how to stop crying. I learned how to hide inside of myself. I learned how to be somebody else. I learned how to be cold and numb.

I didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to people when they ask how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?

Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.

When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.

Books and beer are the best and worst defense.

We only know how to lose and be lost.

Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.

I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.

I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.

You should approach each book -- you should approach life -- with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point.

We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to.

The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.

That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.

She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.

Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.

He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous

At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.

My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.

Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.

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

I'm a poet who can whine in meter

She told me that every other step was just for me.' But that's only half of the dance,' I said. Yeah,' my father said. 'She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy.

And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.

But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.

In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.

Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.

Yep, my daddy was an undependable drunk. But he'd never missed any of my organized games, concerts, plays, or picnics. He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could. (189)

When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.

It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.

...And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you are. You're just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.

I wasn't just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo.

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. (217)

I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)

Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?

I think I was born with a suitcase.

Like officer Dave.He's never said much about his life, but I can tell he's scarred. And he knows I'm scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.

The ordinary can be like medicine.

It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.

What if someone picks on me?" I asked Then I'll pick on them". What if someone picks my nose?" I asked. The I'll pick your nose, too" Rowdy said.

Summer coming like a car from down the highway.

I'm quite aware of my differences. I wouldn't classify them as weird

Well of course man. We Indians have lost everything. We lost our native land, we lost our languages, we lost our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost.

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito...

They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.

It's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of words