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All Quotes by author - Sherman Alexie

" All art is exploitation. "

" All I owe the world is my art. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" I look more Indian when I'm serious. "

" 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. "

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

" 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.' "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" My father is an amazing man. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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