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

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" All I owe the world is my art. "

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

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

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

" White Americans have a short memory. "

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization. "

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

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming. "

" Writing is a lonely business. "

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

" 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. "

" My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage. "

" Spiritual matters should be private. "

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

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

" All art is exploitation. "