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Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter and I have fun. But I don't think anybody learns anything about me as a person.
Sherman Alexie -
Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection, What happens to the soul that hates its reflection?
Sherman Alexie
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I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.
Sherman Alexie -
My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.
Sherman Alexie -
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 -
Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.
Sherman Alexie -
Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.
Sherman Alexie -
If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.
Sherman Alexie
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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.
Sherman Alexie -
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.
Sherman Alexie -
In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.
Sherman Alexie -
Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.
Sherman Alexie -
He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
Sherman Alexie -
...it's like this white-Indian thing has gotten out of control. And the thing with the blacks and the Mexicans. Everybody blaming everybody...I don't know what happened. I can't explain it all. Just look around at the world. Look at this country. Things just aren't like they used to be.' 'Son, things have never been like what you think they used to be.
Sherman Alexie
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The problem for me with liberals is that we've abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe.
Sherman Alexie -
Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.
Sherman Alexie -
How self-centered, how arrogant... Imagine the awesome privilege of living in a society where you get to choose what you eat at each and every meal. When I was a kid, I was a vegetarian and a vegan for long stretches... I was a commodity cheese-atarian.
Sherman Alexie -
Non-Indian writers usually say "Great Spirit," "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four-Legged, and Winged." Mixed-blood writers usually say "Creator, "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four- Legged, and Winged." Indian writers usually say "God," "Mother Earth," "Human Being, Dog, and Bird."
Sherman Alexie -
We are taught to take the bread into our bodies as proof of Jesus's body.
Sherman Alexie -
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.
Sherman Alexie
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If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.
Sherman Alexie -
Indians have no monopoly on environmentalism. That's one of the great myths. But we were subsistence livers. They're two different things. Environmentalism is a conscious choice and subsistence is the absence of choice. We had to use everything to survive. And now that we've been assimilated and colonized and we have luxuries and excesses, we're just as wasteful as other people.
Sherman Alexie -
Those Montana Indians were so tough that white people were scared of them. Can you imagine a place where white people are scared of Indians and not the other way around? That's Montana.
Sherman Alexie -
When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.
Sherman Alexie