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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

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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.
Think
Tribes
Thinking
Indian
World
Broken
People
White
Black
True
Two
Assholes
Used
Insightful

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

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When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.
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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
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My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.
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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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The percentage of Indian kids doing some sort of artistic work is much higher than in the general population - painting, drawing, dancing, singing. The creation of art is still an everyday part of Indian culture, unlike the dominant culture, where art is sort of peripheral.
Sherman Alexie
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If it's fiction, then it better be true.
Sherman Alexie
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I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.
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 think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.
Sherman Alexie
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That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty.
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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She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.
Sherman Alexie
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I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian.
Sherman Alexie
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Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.
Sherman Alexie
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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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Sometimes it's called passing out and sometimes it's just pretending to be asleep
Sherman Alexie
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If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance.
Sherman Alexie
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I got hundreds of emails insulting me, accusing me of being some caveman. I am by no means a Luddite. I have two iPods. I have a cell phone. I have cable TV, HDTV!
Sherman Alexie
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In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your epicness. But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is.
Sherman Alexie
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I'm quite aware of my differences. I wouldn't classify them as weird
Sherman Alexie