Quotes By Sherman Alexie

The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more.

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.

My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.

You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.

My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.

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.

I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.

If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.

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.

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian.

In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.'

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.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.

I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature.

In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do.

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.

All art is exploitation.

Spiritual matters should be private.