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

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

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If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.
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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.
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If a parent doesn't want his/her child to read a book then there is always an alternative text to read. But the book banners want to control what every child reads.
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Spiritual matters should be private.
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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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A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.
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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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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I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.
Sherman Alexie
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He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
Sherman Alexie
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I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.
Sherman Alexie
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You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop.
Sherman Alexie
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But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.
Sherman Alexie
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Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They're attracted to more than surface.
Sherman Alexie
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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
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I love to scare the already terrified assholes.
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
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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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Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.
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