"Failures teach you. Success makes you arrogant"

“People still call me ma’am on the phone, and it’s just part of life now. I’m not even phased by it… Going through DriveThrus is always fun, because it’s always so shocking when they see me. It’d just be kind of like, ‘Thank you ma… woah!! Woah, sorry about that!’”

“I moved from New Zealand to Melbourne when I was 17. I'd planned to go to university to study French, but I was offered a contract to write and record an album that was too good to pass up. Looking back now I think that was pretty young but, at the time, I was ready to have an adventure.”

“It is a bitter dose to be taught obedience after you have learned to rule.”

“For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth?...”

“I've had young women come to me and say that before they watched 'Voyager' it didn't really occur to them that they could be successful in a higher position in the field of science; girls going to MIT, girls pursuing astrophysics with a view to a career in NASA.”

“We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.”

“Am I allowed to ask my book / whether it's true I wrote it?”

“I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.”

Source : "Pioneer of Modern Native American Literature". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.