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I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.

Sherman Alexie

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Sherman Alexie
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: October 7
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Wellpinit
Washington
Sherman Joseph Alexie
Jr.
Whole
Fled
Literary
Created
Career
Careers
Felt
Left
Kids
Conflicted

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

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The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.
Sherman Alexie
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I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.
Sherman Alexie
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When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
Sherman Alexie
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I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.
Sherman Alexie
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And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly.
Sherman Alexie
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I look more Indian when I'm serious.
Sherman Alexie
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All I owe the world is my art.
Sherman Alexie
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Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together. You can do it.
Sherman Alexie
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When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn't get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven't read yet. That's how I view that I'm rich. I have hardcover books I may never read.
Sherman Alexie
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The ordinary can be like medicine.
Sherman Alexie
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My parents banned nothing, though the Christian fundamentalists in my tribe held book-and-record burnings every now and again. So, yes, fundamentalist assholes can also be brown-skinned.
Sherman Alexie
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Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion.
Sherman Alexie
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Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.
Sherman Alexie
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If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.
Sherman Alexie
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and then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two depending on your definition of what I did to Custer . . .
Sherman Alexie
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When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.
Sherman Alexie
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I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
Sherman Alexie
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In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions.
Sherman Alexie
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Spiritual matters should be private.
Sherman Alexie
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Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.
Sherman Alexie