Sherman Alexie Quotes
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I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.
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I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal.
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Because I'm an American, I know there's all sorts of international folks who would gladly kidnap and behead me.
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There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.
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Last September 16th, I was walking in downtown Seattle when this pick-up truck pulls up in front of me. Guy leans out the window and yells, "Go back to your own country," and I was laughing so hard because it wasn't so much a hate crime as a crime of irony.
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That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.
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Corliss had never once considered the fate of library books. She'd never wondered how many books go unread. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an inconsiderate lover, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier.
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Poetry = Anger x Imagination
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They've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg printing press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read.
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The people who loved me when I was seven years old love my books, and the people who didn't like me when I was seven years old don't like my books.
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My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.
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[F]rank knew he was guilty of arrogance and misanthropy, but he compensated by being kind to strangers and tipping really well at restaurants.
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I am extremely conscious of my tribalism. And when you talk about tribalism, you talk about living in a black and white world. I mean, Native American tribalism sovereignty, even the political fight for sovereignty and cultural sovereignty is a very us versus them. And I think a lot of people in this country, especially European Americans and those descended from Europeans don't see themselves as tribal.
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At least half the country thinks the mascot issue is insignificant. But I think it's indicative of the ways in which Indians have no cultural power. We're still placed in the past. So we're either in the past or we're only viewed through casinos.
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Bush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear.
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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.
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Also because I'm ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I'm half of whatever they are.
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Spiritual matters should be private.
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Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.
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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.
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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.
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I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.
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Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.
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When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.