Sherman Alexie Quotes - Page 3

Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.

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.

Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.

Nobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear. And in this country [US], magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears. And if people can't see that or don't want to talk about it, I don't understand them at all.

The percentage of Indian kids doing some sort of artistic work is much higher than in the general population - painting, drawing, dancing, singing. The creation of art is still an everyday part of Indian culture, unlike the dominant culture, where art is sort of peripheral.

When you're depressed, you know, it's like the world has ended. Even getting out of bed takes the most massive amount of effort. But when you're manic, oh, it's so addicting. You know, I have finished novels in two weeks in manic stages.

If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don’t want to dance, then you’re going to have to work extra hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.

Well, as a native, as a colonized people you do live in the in between. The thing is I'm native. But necessarily because I'm a member of the country, I'm also a White American.

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito.

I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.

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.

Like officer Dave.He's never said much about his life, but I can tell he's scarred. And he knows I'm scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.

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.

I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.

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.

The ordinary can be like medicine.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it.

I remember when people used to think I was smart. I remember when people used to think my brain was useful. Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical.

She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.

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

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. (217)

Poetry = Anger x Imagination

And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.

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.

That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.