Linda Hogan (writer)

"It's not my purpose to please all people. It's my purpose to write the most honest feeling work I can, work with integrity and respect for life."

"thinking about plot and character development is a much more linear way of thinking than it is to be in a poem. To be in a poem means you drop deeper down into yourself and your subject. And it's more resonant. I like the experience of writing poetry a lot better than composing fiction...I love to do poetry because it's so-- the experience of it is like a whole body experience and not just an exercise that's mental."

"There's nothing that can really prepare a person for a novel. It's not, for me, a static form of writing, but a process of seeing what will unfold, even a novel rooted in history as this one is."

"It really is true that the history of your people and your land is in the human body."

"The native tradition of respect for other species, for the land, and for the water, is a view of the world that informs my work. The more I study, the more I see that the traditional stories, the traditional ceremonies, and the ways of living in the world are superior to what has developed from the Western view. I use that word "superior" with hesitation. I mean that there isn't room for species extinction, for exploitation of the land or water. One thing that indigenous people on all continents have been able to do is to keep a balance between all the relationships of what is now called ecology."

"There are traditions and laws that are beyond human. Just because it is drawn up on a piece of paper doesn't make something right, legal, ethical. I consider my own work to be traditionally centered."

"I pick these events and make them stories because only then will people listen. If I carry a sign, I am ignored. So I do it in the work."

"When a writer writes, if she is doing it well it is from magic, another place and world."

"writing for me is like a form of meditation that I think it is for other writers too. You go into what I call when I'm teaching "the zone" or "the heart of it," and so you're in a different place. And time is different, everything is different there...it's like magic. And every creative person I talk to, no matter what kind of thing they're doing, says there's magic that enters in somewhere along the way in the creative process. And it's beyond you."

"for me writing is like - I follow it, it comes first and then I follow it. I mean it's really saved my life, my soul. It's been my leader and my helper and my mate in life really, in a way. So it has been my map because it's been the pathway I've followed and it's been my direction out of a certain way of living and being. I don't know how to describe it - it's like the thread out of the labyrinth."

"If I look back on my novels as a pattern, every one of them has a return to indigenous knowledge systems, a person who says "okay, I'm not going to be part of this other world, I'm going to return to the original way of thinking about the world." And so, do I think there's an answer to this crisis that we're in? I don't know what it is. If I did would I be here? [laughing]. But it's a step, because the thing is, indigenous people know the environment. Sometimes we're seen as ignorant or as knowing less than people in the Western world. But the truth is that you've lived some place for generation after generation, maybe a thousand years, maybe, like in Australia 60,000 years, some places here 20,000 years. You know everything about that environment, and you don't endanger it because you have to keep it-the new word is - "sustainable." But you do, you have to keep it sustainable."

"You can really change the world with a good story, you can really make a difference with a good story, or you can really touch a heart with a good poem or essay. But you can't do it sometimes just with a sign...the power of story and sharing is the power to make change, the ability to make a difference. And it's not fixed, like a belief system would be a fixed thing. So when we talk, when we share, when we hear a story, read a story, learn a new story, it has the real ability to make a difference and change the world, change a person."

"As for the Indian wars, it seems that the time is far away, but it isn’t. The Wounded Knee massacre took place when my grandmother was seven. And Native people, throughout the world, live with history as part of life in the mind, the heart, every day. We may live in modern America, hold jobs, but history is present. Time is different for us. (2012)"

"Blessed are they who listen when no one is left to speak."

"…She is a woman who lives in the body and that is very difficult to achieve in a civilized society where the mind overpowers it, keeps us out of touch. We do not find ourselves whole so much of the time. And again, it is a cultural gulf, but most of us here in America, even those of us I work with, are more involved with our work than with being conscious of our whole body self throughout the day. (2012)"

"in revolutions, it is the poets that are taken away. Because it speaks a truth that enters more than just the mind. It conveys a life and a life of change, of possibility, into the whole self. (2012)"

"I used to tell students that whatever is inside the psyche will come to the fore in poetry and writing and not to think too much about wanting to say something, about wanting a theme. It is already there. Given the chance, words will come with their own will. A poem knows what it wants to do even without the mind of the writer intervening. Writers can’t create it on their own behalf and make it right. It is more like putting together a basket. The shape happens as the maker weaves...That is my key way of knowing; It Comes to Me. (2020)"

"(Your writing is rich with love and compassion – how do you stay rooted in those qualities when dealing with such tragic themes as the destruction of our environment and the treatment of Native Americans?) What other choice do I have? It doesn’t mean I have no anger about injustice. I do. I throw myself down when it is violent and painful. But it is also a matter of how to work against that injustice. I haven’t seen it succeed by fighting, yelling, rage, or outward anger. Think of those yelling faces you see on the news, mouths wide open. They lose. Their anger, their hatred has the opposite effect of what they are reaching toward. (2020)"

"For me, and maybe I am wrong, fight has more than one way to exist. Change has to happen. Maybe a book does make a difference, I hope. Maybe words can make change. They have in the past. So I search for the right ones. Maybe it is not of use, but sometimes it is. (2020)"

"I began writing fiction because our lives are made up of stories and a story can change a life. (2020)"

"in our human development we begin with ourselves and move outward toward relationship, and in writing work, it seems to be the same, that most writers begin with their own identity, with autobiography, and then move out toward family, friends, environment, country, world. I have noticed there's a return for many writers as they age…for others the world expands outward more and more, never returning to self...We need for writers to do both. We need the personal in its global context."

"I love to read poetry, phone books, playing cards, novels, newspapers, bathroom walls - there's a story in all of it. And I love poets who bring together poetry and life in all its motion: Neruda, Forche, Cardenal, Dugan, Bishop...I learn from all of what I read and hear. And as Lame Deer said, we're surrounded by books. The stones are books, and we may read their stories. The trees are books with a story written in them. The water and land and each animal is a book, with a poem and story and song."

"I consider caretaking the basic work of living on earth. I've often thought about how one of the things that was probably necessary for the woman's movement-the dominant culture woman's movement - was to break free of the duty of being a caretaker. But then, for women to return to being caretakers, because it's important to offer service to the living, and to the planet. I find many women now who are returning to the idea of being a caretaker, of nourishing as one of the primary roles of both men and women. I see a direct relation between how we care for the animal-people and the plants and insects and land and water, and how we care for each other, and for ourselves. Part of our work here is to care for life. (Smith: And what you're saying, I guess, is you can't limit that care to just your family and friends, to just the human creatures you love who come your way - you have to widen that.) LH: Yeah, it has to be widened. If you look at the book Call to Consciousness for instance, a community is not just us-our nuclear family, or the Indian community, or a "University community," as they say here--but the community of all living creatures."

"I work best if I allow the process to take place. That doesn't mean I don't think, take measurements of what is just, feel out what is valuable to life, to self, to earth, where to take, where to return, what is the responsibility of my own work-you know, response-ability. I ask myself how best to let my words serve. I know that part of that is to take a global perspective, because I see what's happening in the world, and others see, and our combined voices are a chorus, a movement toward life. They are a protest against human-imposed suffering. They are vital energy going out into the world. We feed each other with that energy when we read each other's work. My other responsibility, I think, is to be honest about my life. That doesn't mean I won't write fiction, or that I'll "tell all"...But it means this: that I, as an Indian woman, from a non middle-class background, on the margin, not a member of the dominant culture I need to speak what my struggle has been, and offer the strength of that survival to keep us all moving together, to offer back my own words. This means to speak about what it's like to be of mixed blood, to have suffered losses, to have not been educated, to have worked primarily at working-class jobs until fairly recently and to have worked as a writer. Not that I think my own life is so significant although sometimes I think it's pretty incredible, I'll tell ya!...it's part of a historical process. It's a woman's experience, and an Indian woman's experience. And I've been given this gift of words, and I need to speak this life, and the political dimensions of it. I need to make the interpretation of my own place and the places of others in the American context. But I don't want to get too serious here. These responsibilities shouldn't be taken so seriously by writers, by women, as to take away passion, and joy, and play. Because we've got to keep energy moving. We must take in and out, like breathing. I've always thought there's nothing less peaceful than a somber peace movement, you know what I mean? You know those T shirts with Emma Goldman, saying, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution?" That's what peace and equality must mean to us all-that we can have joy in living, and no more cold war of the inner self."

"The poetry writing was very important to me. It was a way of trying to define who I was in an environment that felt foreign. I realize now that writing had everything to do with my life and my survival."

"I discovered Kenneth Rexroth and I was really excited about him. It was the first contemporary poetry I read, and it was alive for me. It became a kind of model for how I wanted to write."

"One life does not fit neatly into the other always. Creative work is a way to order it."

"I search for the words that will speak the feelings inside my body and hope they touch those feelings in others. At the same time it is a celebration and sacred song given back to those of whom I speak, especially the animals who are made stronger by our acknowledgment of them."

"The U.S. is organized socially and politically and economically in ways to keep people without vibrance or energy. To keep them working hard, thinking they will "make it" if they work harder, all at the expense of their real lives."

"My own particular circumstance guaranteed that I'd never feel normal or manage to fit into mainstream life. Until a person knows that, from the mind, they feel crazy. Now I see there's no need to fit. You know, it's not that Indians are different from the dominant culture. We are the same with the same needs and loves and heartaches. It's just that most Indians know time and space well enough from the heart to know that life is for living. Because we are short in our span here and we are not the most significant of lives on earth. We share the planet with plants and animals equal to ourselves, and we are small in the universe. So the daily strivings fall into place. I feel that poetry is a process of uncovering our real knowledge. To manipulate the language merely via the intellect takes away the strength of the poem."

"People believe they are secure and own their land, their houses. American history shows us that is never true. White people are shocked when their homes are taken away. It's unjust. But Indians have known that in their DNA. This government has broken over 300 treaties. Why believe them?"

"Most of the things that I did as a child and even as an older growing person were outdoors and were alone. Outside was my church, my place of vision and dreaming."

"the land, is the oldest part of me and the wisest. The part that can survive. All of us Indian writers are historically a part of the whole body of our nations' histories and places, wherever we may do our writing, in New York City or at Rosebud."

"That balance between the spiritual and the physical and the mental-a lot of people who become interested in the spiritual tradition become very silly. They go off so far there is no balance or no footing, and our feet are very important in spiritual life touching earth. We're here on earth with our bodies. We're not meant for outer space physically or spiritually. People who go into the mental can go off too far into the mental. I don't know many people who can go off too far into the physical (I don't mean athletically or sexually, I mean awareness of body), but the physical draws down the other two, the spiritual and the mental. I suppose physical labor is real good for that reason-chopping wood and doing whatever work you have to do in the world. It seems to me that is a very important aspect of tradition, to have that balance and keep and maintain it as much as you can. I think when people lose it is when they get caught up into the other things-when they lose that balance."

"American people need to revise their ideas about spirituality. Spirituality ends up being very much like capitalism. It ends up being a force to control other people or to make yourself look good-to give yourself a position of power and integrity."

"We are here to rejoice with our full selves. We didn't come here to deprive ourselves. We aren't made for deprivation. We came here with work to do-balancing the forces-and with great capacities for love and joy to fulfill with/in our full selves."

"In tribal culture every person has their place and one who speaks more clearly with spirits than others is not a better person or is not in a higher position but simply performs one of many functions for the people. You and I have friends who do this daily and they make nothing of it. The woman who builds the fire is as important as the woman who guides the soul."

"we don't have to do anything special to have contact with the spirit world. It's just natural if you stop and listen. Just there, always. Like your own heartbeat."

"being "traditional" means you have a great deal of responsibility. Rather than people cutting themselves off from white communities to be traditional, the more I think about it in my life the more I have thought that breaking down those barriers is much more important than building them up. Any kind of racism at this point is not good for any people. And to become anti-white is a mistake. It's self-destructive for those who do. Talk about a balance of things-talk about head and heart or head and soul-somehow I think that merging the two cultures in a really healthy way, not as done in the past, might be an integration in the way that we were talking about earlier. Indians have already begun that process. Years ago. Now I see white people integrating in that way. Mostly women at this point."

"All cruelty is needless. All fighting. Now do we need to build real estate in the Everglades or on migration lands or drill the earth? We have everything available to us for full, good lives, for peace. We must just simply step into it. Anyway, I just started thinking that being silent was in some way not being honest and that I did not want to be silent about the things that were very important and that our survival is very important. We've gone on-this progression is a very straight line progression into total destruction (Meridel Le Sueur says this also), and we're just on the border now. Like the earth is square again and we stand on her edge. I guess I feel, if I'm going to be killed and if my family is going to be killed, at least I don't want to go quietly. I want to feel as if I have done something and not just passively accepted it."

"...as you grow and develop, you betray your readers and you betray your own self. At each step, you're a different person with the new work, and that old person, while still there like the foundation I mentioned, is pushed further into the background. You can't remain true to your past and true to your readers and keep growing. Hopefully they will grow along with you."

"I write because the poems speak what I can't say in my normal language. There's a kind of magic, an intuitive thing I feel when a poem or a story really works for me. It works on the deepest levels, all the levels of myself. Certainly, it works physically, and it also works psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, and then the last priority for me is how it works intellectually…(you're saying that writing poetry or just creative writing is a heuristic device that brings about a different kind of understanding?) LH: It makes me change; it makes other people change. When you read something that is really put together well, something unresolved in the heart or psyche moves toward resolution and wholeness. It's magic."

"I think that in some ways maybe we've come to think of fiction as a lie. It's like the word “myth,” which means “lie” for many people; yet, myth is the highest form of truth. It is about the inner journey, about others before us who have gone that way and civilizations. It is about our life's task of becoming. In some ways I think fiction is like myth, but also fiction takes a fact or an event, even an imagined one, and it makes truth out of it. Prose is a process of uncovering, of getting to the bare, unstated facts of living. Maybe they are inner facts, maybe they are not historical, but they tell the highest truths."

"(Do you see being mixed blood as a burden, or is it an advantage?) It depends on the day you ask me! It's a very difficult position to be in, but, on the other hand, it allows for a great amount of freedom. If you live on the boundaries between cultures, you are both of those cultures and neither of those cultures, and you can move with great mobility in any direction you want."

"I'd like to pass along some of what I've learned about what preserves and protects life. My intention is to create an energy, a life protection energy. That's everybody's job. Everybody that's living now has to work to protect life. What other options do we have? We protect life, or we're indifferent and allow it to be destroyed. We're in a position now to stop life altogether. Our energy and our living have to move towards protecting life."

"Spirituality necessitates certain kinds of political action. If you believe that the earth, and all living things, and all the stones are sacred, your responsibility really is to protect those things. I do believe that's our duty, to be custodians of the planet. What has amazed me is that after the first bomb, you would have thought all war would stop forever, and that they could find a way to resolve all conflict."

"(about humor) It's a survival technique, too. People who are in poverty, people who are in very difficult situations and in pain, have to develop humor or die of despair."

"I teach in American Indian studies at the university and I find that many of the non-Indian students are desperately searching for spirits, for their own souls, that something in the contemporary world has left many Euro-Americans and Europeans without a source, has left them with a longing for something they believe existed in earlier times or in tribal people. What they want is their own life, their own love for the earth, but when they speak their own words about it, they don't believe them, so they look to Indians, forgetting that enlightenment can't be found in a weekend workshop, forgetting that most Indian people are living the crisis of American life, the toxins of chemical waste, the pain of what is repressed in white Americans. There is not such a thing as becoming an instant shaman, an instant healer, an instantly spiritualized person."

"Once a people are victims, they have to struggle hard to politicize themselves and to be able to break the cycle, to be able to somehow, as they say today, to empower themselves once again, to get back their health and their wholeness."

"I think it's easier for a non-Indian to write a book about Indian people and get it published than it is for us. Our own experiences and our own lives don't fit the stereotypes."