Sherman Alexie Quotes
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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.
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Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling," she used to say. "Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?
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We only know how to lose and be lost.
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That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.
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I didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to people when they ask how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?
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He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
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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.
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When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.
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My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.
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I'll quit eating meat when you get a cow out here to beat me at a poetry slam. Only so many words rhyme with 'Mooo.' I mean, yes, we're supposed to be better stewards; yes, we're supposed to take care of the earth; yes, we're supposed to honor the sacrifices made by the animals; yes yes yes yes yes, but dammit, we're in charge, and you know why? It's because of these [holding out thumbs]...Maybe you think that carrots are less important than cows. I think they're equal, especially in a sauce.
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My books for adults had been previously challenged and banned so I'd had experience with it. I always find it sad and amusing: Sad to think that such archaic and potentially dangerous censorious beliefs still exist, and amused because these censors only make a book more powerful and seductive when trying to ban it.
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Don't live up to your stereotypes.
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We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.
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There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.
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Funny how a little politeness can change people's minds.
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I know a lot about being white - because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day.
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My father is an amazing man.
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The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same.
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Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?
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Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together. You can do it.
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That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty.
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Okay, so maybe I'm romantic... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier.
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If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.
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Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.