Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Sherman Alexie

Literature

Think

People

Related Quotes:

" All art is exploitation. "

Sherman Alexie

Exploitation

Art

" What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment. "

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

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

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

" Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations. "

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

" 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. "

" The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet. "

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

" When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner. "

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

Sherman Alexie

Him

" Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy. "

" My father is an amazing man. "

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

" Writing is a lonely business. "

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

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

" 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. "

" You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture. "

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

" All I owe the world is my art. "

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

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

Sherman Alexie

Storytelling

American

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

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

" 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. "

Sherman Alexie

Old

Love

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

" 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. "