The following text is from the 1989 novel The Ancient Child by Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday. The main character has achieved tremendous commercial success as a painter.

More and more often he was asked to compromise his art or himself in one way or another, and more often than not he did so, for he was inclined to be passive and naïve; it was difficult for him to say no. Those who exhibited his work, who praised and purchased it, and who demanded its proliferation began to determine it.

©1989 by N. Scott Momaday