On her writing: I'm a fiction writer, a storyteller. For a while, I toyed with the idea of trying to review books, be extremely literary, write essays and it's never gripped me the way writing fiction has. And I've finally decided that's where my work was. --Sprenger interview
[My writing style] is a mixture of the Ojibwe storyteller and the German system-maker. I find that everything that I write has to be connected into this grand scheme. --Sprenger interview
On her heritage: To be of mixed blood is a great gift for a writer. I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life. --Harper's Bizarre interview
On turning her novels into films: I know most writers are just dripping to have their books filmed but I don't know if I would want be involved [in film] in the first place, and if I wasn't involved, then I'd probably feel crummy that I wasn't more in control. [My books] are novels, they're not movie scripts. --Sprenger interview
On Michael Dorris's suicide: He committed suicide because he was in pain. No one commits suicide to protect their children. Obviously, he needed to believe that. His suicide will be more painful for them to handle than any coming to terms with reality. --Newsweek interview
On writing a novel set in New England: I've spent enough time in New England that I feel I can understand to some degree the landscape, but not the people. I don't understand the people. I really love the day-to-day stuff, but I don't know their moms, their connections. I don't know where they're coming from. I didn't leave home until I was 18, so I really grew up with one set of people in a small town, still know those people, what's happened to them. --SALON interview
On her character Jack from Tales of Burning Love: I identified with this person so thoroughly. I wanted in a way to make him a woman, and yet I wanted the women to have the center of the book. --SALON interview
On her character June from Love Medicine and Tales of Burning Love: I don't have anything like June's magnetism. That's the fun of making up people. --Harper's Bizarre interview
On her character Zelda from The Bingo Palace: She should have had more children or at least a small nation to control. Instead, forced narrow, her talents run to getting people to do things they don't want to do for other people they don't like. --Time interview
On her character Lipsha from The Bingo Palace: He was caught in a foreign skin, drowned in drugs and sugar and money, baked hard in a concrete pie. --Time interview
On spending time with her children: When they were younger, I had an office set up for them with a small desk so they could do coloring while I wrote. --SALON interview
On education: I got educated as a woman and as a tribal enrollee. I was eligible for an education beyond my wildest dreams. That would not be the case today. We've gone through a gutting of our social infrastructure, and it's going to continue. --Sprenger interview
Jones Jr., Malcolm. "The Death of a Native Son." Newsweek. 28 April 1997: 68-69.
Max, D. T. "Tales of Burning Love." Harper's Bizarre. April 1996: 116-117.
Spillman, Robert. "The Creative Instinct." The Salon Interview. <http://www.salon1999. com/weekly/interview960506.html> (9 July 1997).
Sprenger, Polly. "More Love Medicine." The Minnesota Daily Online. <http://www.daily. umn.edu/ae/Print/ISSUE25/cover.html> (9 July 1997).
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