Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sherman Alexie
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: October 7
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Wellpinit
Washington
Sherman Joseph Alexie
Jr.
Sure
Assumption
Browns
Night
Brown
Lighters
Like
Boxes
Lighter
Careful
Robbers
Nobody
Cops
Quite
Ethnic
Middle
Assumptions
Mauve
Everybody
Cop
Beige

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

Image
He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous
Sherman Alexie
Image
All art is exploitation.
Sherman Alexie
Image
They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.
Sherman Alexie
Image
I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.
Sherman Alexie
Image
The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.
Sherman Alexie
Image
It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions.
Sherman Alexie
Image
He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.
Sherman Alexie
Image
One play can change your momentum forever.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. - Indian Boy Love Song #1
Sherman Alexie
Image
I used to think the world was broken down by tribes, I said. By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not.
Sherman Alexie
Image
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
Image
I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Ialways think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during the first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians. So I'm never quite sure why we eat Turkey like everybody else. (101)
Sherman Alexie
Image
I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.
Sherman Alexie
Image
We are taught to take the bread into our bodies as proof of Jesus's body.
Sherman Alexie
Image
It's a weird thing. Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear. But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten the reservations were meant to be death camps.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Bush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear.
Sherman Alexie
Image
What if someone picks on me? I asked Then I'll pick on them. What if someone picks my nose? I asked. The I'll pick your nose, too Rowdy said.
Sherman Alexie
Image
I end up feeling like a spy in the house of ethnicity, you know? Because people will talk around me as they would talk around the people in their cultural group. So I get to hear all the secrets and jokes and you know, I'm a part of every community because of the way I look.
Sherman Alexie