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Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.

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.
Members
Struggle
Community
Individual
Life
Member
Constant

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

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I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.
Sherman Alexie
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My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport.
Sherman Alexie
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It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.
Sherman Alexie
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The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.
Sherman Alexie
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In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.'
Sherman Alexie
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Summer coming like a car from down the highway.
Sherman Alexie
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My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.
Sherman Alexie
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If it's fiction, then it better be true.
Sherman Alexie
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I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.
Sherman Alexie
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If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance.
Sherman Alexie
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Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.
Sherman Alexie
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If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.
Sherman Alexie
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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
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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
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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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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
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There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)
Sherman Alexie
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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
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The ordinary can be like medicine.
Sherman Alexie
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I'm quite aware of my differences. I wouldn't classify them as weird
Sherman Alexie