Sherman Alexie Quotes - Page 8

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.

I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)

Summer coming like a car from down the highway.

I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

They've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg [printing] press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read.

The librarian spoke in a reverential whisper. Corliss knew she'd misjudged this passionate woman. Maybe she dressed poorly, but she was probably great in bed, certainly believed in God and goodness, and kept an illicit collection of overdue library books on her shelves.

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 recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.

I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.

Because I'm an American, I know there's all sorts of international folks who would gladly kidnap and behead me.

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

If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance.

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.

The problem for me with liberals is that we've abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe.

The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.

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.

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.

If I were a doctor nobody would be inviting me to talk to reservations. I'd be a different person. Writers can influence more people.

When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn't get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven't read yet. That's how I view that I'm rich. I have hardcover books I may never read.

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

But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.

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.

Corliss wondered what happens to a book that sits unread on a library shelf for thirty years. Can a book rightfully be called a book if it never gets read? If a tree falls in a forest and gets pulped to make paper for a book that never gets read, but there's nobody there to read it, does it make a sound?

White Americans have a short memory.

Corliss had never once considered the fate of library books. She'd never wondered how many books go unread. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an inconsiderate lover, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier.