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Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

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.
Teach
Poor
Doesn
Give
Teaches
Giving
Perseverance
Lessons
Poverty
Strength

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

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Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions.
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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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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it's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of words
Sherman Alexie
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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
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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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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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I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.
Sherman Alexie
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Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection, What happens to the soul that hates its reflection?
Sherman Alexie
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I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.
Sherman Alexie
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...there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them... ~ Thomas Builds-the-Fire (played by Evan Adams) in Alexie's Smoke Signals
Sherman Alexie
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I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders.
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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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
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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
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I'm a poet who can whine in meter
Sherman Alexie
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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
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If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.
Sherman Alexie
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Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito.
Sherman Alexie
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I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)
Sherman Alexie