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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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Sherman Alexie
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: October 7
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Wellpinit
Washington
Sherman Joseph Alexie
Jr.
Successful
Feeling
Feelings
Another
Didn
Going
Disappointing
Indian

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

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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.
Sherman Alexie
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Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together. You can do it.
Sherman Alexie
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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
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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
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If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.
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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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
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Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.
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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And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.
Sherman Alexie
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I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children
Sherman Alexie
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When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner.
Sherman Alexie
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All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new.
Sherman Alexie
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I ain't interested in the truth. I'm interested in the way things should be.
Sherman Alexie
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Let us now celebrate the literary allusion.
Sherman Alexie
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If it's fiction, then it better be true.
Sherman Alexie
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I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders.
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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My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.
Sherman Alexie
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My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport.
Sherman Alexie