Sherman Alexie Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
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I'm not expecting the American literary community to welcome me with open arms. To them I'm just some schmuck kid who wrote some book.
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I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.
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I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.
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Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went.
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I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.
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I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it.
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To me, the Quran is a research book.
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Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
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I lived for four years in the 1930s with these individuals and the only time that I wasn't thinking about dealing with physical suffering is when I was working on this book. I've never been more alive as when I worked on this book.
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A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative. That's what I want as a reader - I want to be confident that the book will do its job.
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Housekeeping is incredibly difficult with three kids. I'm trying to be more relaxed. You'll go insane if you try to have a picture-book house.
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I read that book, 'Lonesome Dove,' and I told my agent that they were gonna make a miniseries out of it and I wanted to be in it. I didn't care what part.
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I did a book event with a former colleague, Bob Bauer, and was so relieved that he said I got all the CIA stuff right.
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'Reinventing the Bazaar,' by John McMillan, is a great and fun introduction to the wild variety and importance of markets throughout history and around the world. I finally understood how a Middle Eastern souk actually works economically and how to compare that to modern-day telecom-spectrum auctions. I love that book.
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The hero of the book does long to experience God. But his conception of God is very western.
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The truly great books are always novels: 'Anna Karenina,' 'The Brothers Karamazov,' 'The Magic Mountain.' Just as with 'Shahnameh,' I browse these books from time to time to remember how a great book works on us or to teach my students at Columbia University.
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For the first ten years after I got out of graduate school, I studied success. I read every book I could get my hands on and took every training I could find, and that allowed me to become an expert in this area. I learned how to create high self-esteem and success in my own life and in the lives of others.
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The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
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The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about.
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I needed to explain that Louisiana's coast accepts the drainage from two-thirds of the United States and, while the necessary levees constructed upstream have prevented floods, they have also contributed to problems downstream.
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I still follow Chelsea's fortunes.
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My Plan A was to be a psychologist. I thought I would be a receptionist. I'm always middle of the road and very normal. I've always wanted a normal life, and this is what I got.
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Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.
