Quotes By Sherman Alexie

I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.

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.

My father is an amazing man.

I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.

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.

I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it.

I look more Indian when I'm serious.

I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.

I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.

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.

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

All I owe the world is my art.

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.

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.

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.

White Americans have a short memory.

When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner.

My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.

My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac.

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.

We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.

My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror.

There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap.

I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.

But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic.

Writing is a lonely business.

I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.

You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture.