“Isn't it time we realized the absurdity of calling a tiny brook a mainstream, consigning the great river to marginality?”

— Paula Gunn Allen, Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting Border-Crossing Loose Cannons (1998)

About Paula Gunn Allen

Laguna Pueblo and Sioux poet, scholar and novelist, author of 'The Sacred Hoop' (1986).

“Acceptance is the better part of grief.”

“Walden is the self-proclaimed triumph of the isolated, superior individual.”

“There is a widespread belief that we, Native American and nonnative alike, have nothing to celebrate.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”