Sherman Alexie Quotes
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Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.
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Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They're attracted to more than surface.
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I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.
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Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.
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My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage.
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The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.
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A lot of native culture has been destroyed. So you already feel lost inside your culture. And then you add up feeling lost and insignificant inside the larger culture. So you end up feeling lost squared. And to never be recognized, to never have any power, you know, other minority communities actually have a lot of economic, cultural power.
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I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's not a book culture. That's why I'm trying to make movies. Indians go to movies; Indians own video recorders.
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Books and beer are the best and worst defense.
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I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.
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I drew because words were too unpredictable.
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...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.
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These are things you should learn. Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you; your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is. Now, these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices. And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they’re not necessarily evil, unless you let them be.
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The ordinary can be like medicine.
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In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do.
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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.
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I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.
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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.
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Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection, What happens to the soul that hates its reflection?
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I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.
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Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.
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What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.
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I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.
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At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.