Sherman Alexie famous quotes

If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Inspiring #People #Littles

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Radio #Poet #Turns

Don't live up to your stereotypes.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Stereotype

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Book #Writing #Thinking

He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Love #Choices

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Doctors #People #Different

If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Rivers #World #Helping

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#White #World #Persons

I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Book #Kissing #Intelligent

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

#Responsibility #Moral #Problem

I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Writing #Blood #Remember

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Selfish #Writing #Thinking

It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Fear #Drinking #Rocks

I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Writing #Years #Two

Can you hear the dreams crackling like a campfire? Can you hear the dreams sweeping through the pine trees and tipis? Can you hear the dreams laughing in the sawdust? Can you hear the dreams shaking just a little bit as the day grows long? Can you hear the dreams putting on a good jacket that smells of fry bread and sweet smoke? Can you hear the dreams stay up late and talk so many stories?
-- Sherman Alexie

#Dream #Sweet #Smell

In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Lying #Writing #Epic

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

#People #Speak #Realizing

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Writing #Bored #Effort

The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.
-- Sherman Alexie

#World #Filled #Smallest

A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Use #Comedy #Language

When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Profound #Imagination #Violence

Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They're attracted to more than surface.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Beautiful #Character #White

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Perseverance #Giving #Lessons

When are we left-wingers going to learn that we are losing the cultural and political battle with conservatives because we are fractured into narcissistic special-interest groups? Why should an antiwar protestor be so concerned about her dietary identity? The political opinions of vegetarians and meat-eaters are, after all, equally important. And what does it tell us about vegetarians that it would never occur to meat-eaters to carry a sign that reads "Pacifist Pork Chop Lover for Peace" or "Backyard Rib Barbecuer for International Nuclear Disarmament"?
-- Sherman Alexie

#Political #Unity #Special

I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Children #Flower #Writing

If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Kids #Stories #Chance

Indians have no monopoly on environmentalism. That's one of the great myths. But we were subsistence livers. They're two different things. Environmentalism is a conscious choice and subsistence is the absence of choice. We had to use everything to survive. And now that we've been assimilated and colonized and we have luxuries and excesses, we're just as wasteful as other people.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Two #Luxury #People

I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Teenager #Book #Writing

Environmentalism is a luxury. Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes. Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Shoes #Luxury #Worry

At least half the country thinks the mascot issue is insignificant. But I think it's indicative of the ways in which Indians have no cultural power. We're still placed in the past. So we're either in the past or we're only viewed through casinos. I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Country #Thinking #Past

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Art #Kids #Drawing

Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Rain #Dancing

Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Struggle #Community #Life Is

I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are ***** and the people who are not.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Black And White #Thinking #Two

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Together #World #Four

If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Book #Reading #Writing

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

#Writing #Pieces #Thanks

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

#Believe #Pieces #Chickens

Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Basketball #Fear #Mean

The ordinary can be like medicine.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Medicine #Ordinary

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Laughter #Tears

He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous
-- Sherman Alexie

#Hard Work #Tasks #Finishing

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.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Writing #Tired #Order

What kind of life can you have in a house without books?
-- Sherman Alexie

#Book #House #Kind

Poetry = Anger x Imagination
-- Sherman Alexie

#Anger #Imagination

It's a weird thing. Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear. But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten the reservations were meant to be death camps.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Moving #Were Meant To Be #Forgotten

If it's fiction, then it better be true.
-- Sherman Alexie

#Fiction #Being True