N. Scott Momaday

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.

I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.

The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian person in one way or another.

Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'

I am a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society; I visit sacred places such as Devil's Tower and the Medicine Wheel. These places are important to me, because they've been made sacred by sacrifice, by the investment of blood and experience and story.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which is very serious. That balance is very hard to strike. But it can be done.