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I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.

Sherman Alexie

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Sherman Alexie
Age: 57
Born: 1966
Born: October 7
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Wellpinit
Washington
Sherman Joseph Alexie
Jr.
Another
Order
Ceremonies
Ceremony
Participate
Respect
Culture

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Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions.
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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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The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same.
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I ain't interested in the truth. I'm interested in the way things should be.
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The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.
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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.
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I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.
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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.
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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.
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We are taught to take the bread into our bodies as proof of Jesus's body.
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You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.
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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.
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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.
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We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.
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I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. (217)
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I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children
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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.
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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.'
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Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter and I have fun. But I don't think anybody learns anything about me as a person.
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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.
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