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she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep roots buried in the earth she told me the old stories how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock
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.
Told
Buried
Hands
Sister
Stories
Clock
Earth
Roots
Never
Died
Time
Gave
Braided
Deep
Smelled
Hair
Mattered
More quotes by Sherman Alexie
Nobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear. And in this country [US], magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears. And if people can't see that or don't want to talk about it, I don't understand them at all.
Sherman Alexie
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
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
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
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
Books and beer are the best and worst defense.
Sherman Alexie
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
We can all learn from every text. Reading the work that disgusts you can only strengthen your core beliefs. I could teach a semester-long course based only on reading the local telephone book. All stories can be taught in valuable ways.
Sherman Alexie
That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty.
Sherman Alexie
I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.
Sherman Alexie
My parents banned nothing, though the Christian fundamentalists in my tribe held book-and-record burnings every now and again. So, yes, fundamentalist assholes can also be brown-skinned.
Sherman Alexie
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
I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.
Sherman Alexie
White Americans have a short memory.
Sherman Alexie
...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
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
I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.
Sherman Alexie
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
I'm a poet who can whine in meter
Sherman Alexie
Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.
Sherman Alexie
