Sherman Alexie Quotes
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My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.
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You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.
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Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.
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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.
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Let us now celebrate the literary allusion.
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What if someone picks on me?" I asked Then I'll pick on them". What if someone picks my nose?" I asked. The I'll pick your nose, too" Rowdy said.
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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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Well, as a native, as a colonized people you do live in the in between. The thing is I'm native. But necessarily because I'm a member of the country, I'm also a White American.
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I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.
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Can you hear the dreams crackling like a campfire? Can you hear the dreams sweeping through the pine trees and tipis? Can you hear the dreams laughing in the sawdust? Can you hear the dreams shaking just a little bit as the day grows long? Can you hear the dreams putting on a good jacket that smells of fry bread and sweet smoke? Can you hear the dreams stay up late and talk so many stories?
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When are we left-wingers going to learn that we are losing the cultural and political battle with conservatives because we are fractured into narcissistic special-interest groups? Why should an antiwar protestor be so concerned about her dietary identity? The political opinions of vegetarians and meat-eaters are, after all, equally important. And what does it tell us about vegetarians that it would never occur to meat-eaters to carry a sign that reads "Pacifist Pork Chop Lover for Peace" or "Backyard Rib Barbecuer for International Nuclear Disarmament"?
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...And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you are. You're just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.
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I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian.
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Summer coming like a car from down the highway.
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I refuse to censor myself and kids will find their own way to my books and to all of the books that matter to them. As I write more honestly more kids will make their way toward me. And in subverting their repressive parents kids will learn the value of subverting the repressive nature of all authority figures.
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Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. . . . Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.
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I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
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and then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two depending on your definition of what I did to Custer . . .
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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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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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We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to.
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Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.
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She told me that every other step was just for me.' But that's only half of the dance,' I said. Yeah,' my father said. 'She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy.
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Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated.