John Landgraf Quotes

There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, 'Well, I don't want those folks,' even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans.

Do you think we care about the feelings of Native Americans when we celebrate Columbus Day? That's the day that the white man discovered a land where Indians had been living for a few thousand years.

The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans. A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that's what the genesis of the Second Amendment is.

I've been reading about Crazy Horse and Custer for a long, long time, and I thought that if I was going to write a story that took place in the Black Hills, I should find a way to include this history in it.

In a country which two hundred years ago was peopled only by savages and whose government has ... been no other than republican, it is really wonderful that there should be any polite authors at all in any line ...

Indians are immigrants like everyone else, they just came earlier

What history is about is human beings.

Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.

The thesis of the book in your hands is that Native American history merits more than 9 pages.

Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.

The prosperity of a people depends upon such facts as the natural wealth of the country in which they live, their social discipline and industrial character, the result of generations, of centuries, it may be, of tradition.

For Native Americans, the most shameful and powerful corrective gesture is to literally and physically turn one's back upon a person who has transgressed, and then after they've been banished for a while, they come back into the circle and the members of the tribe say every good thing that person has ever done, because they have to be welcomed back.

I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.

Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country's British heritage

Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a "New World" with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.

The time frame and how people treated each other was upsetting, but what's great about this story is that they really focus on the strengths of these people and the strengths of the culture, of who these Americans were. That, actually, is uplifting.

What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.

I'm sure you're gonna be taught, if you haven't already, that the people that were here, the Native Americans were beautiful, they were wonderful, they were at one with nature, and these evil white Europeans like Columbus came in and killed them and took them, imprisoned them, stole what was theirs, took it for ourselves.

[Woman Walks Ahead] is from me being a very bizarre child. From the age of about 8 to the age of about 15, I was obsessed with Native Americans.

Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

If you want to know what it will be like when we are more deeply into the horizontal, simply go to one of the Indian casinos. The Native Americans, who stand for vertical thinking more than anyone else in our culture, have been setting up totally flat casinos for honkies.

Changers are characters who alter in significant ways as a result of the events of your story. They learn something or grow into better or worse people, but by the end of the story they are not the same personalities they were in the beginning. Their change, in its various stages, is called the story's emotional arc.

[ This Is Us] is a character-driven dramedy, in which you will laugh. You may have to pull out your tissue box from time-to-time. But it will sort of reaffirm your desire to move forward in life. It's a very hopeful show.

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest and with freedom.