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I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

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.
Indian
Artists
Rather
Artist
Cheerleaders
Think
Investigators
Thinking
Cheerleader
Indians
Cultural

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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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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
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I look more Indian when I'm serious.
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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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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Spiritual matters should be private.
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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She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.
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I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.
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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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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In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your epicness. But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is.
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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You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.
Sherman Alexie
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I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)
Sherman Alexie
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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