Quote

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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Sherman Alexie
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: October 7
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Wellpinit
Washington
Sherman Joseph Alexie
Jr.
Sometimes
Warm
Thing
Worst
Always
Alive
Sleep
Books
Piles
Used
Keeping
Best
Bed
Book
Defense

More quotes by 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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In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.
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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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Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.
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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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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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If it's fiction, then it better be true.
Sherman Alexie
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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.
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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If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance.
Sherman Alexie
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I love to scare the already terrified assholes.
Sherman Alexie
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I look more Indian when I'm serious.
Sherman Alexie
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He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous
Sherman Alexie
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When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
Sherman Alexie
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I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays.
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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I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins he's better than Richard Wilbur he's better than me.
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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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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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