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" In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do. "
Sherman Alexie
Gifts
Way
Very
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" The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more. "
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" I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it. "
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" My father is an amazing man. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" All art is exploitation. "
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" I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian. "
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" 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. "
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Night
Mystery
Life
" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "
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" My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room. "
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" 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.' "
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School
Time
Woman
" I look more Indian when I'm serious. "
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" My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac. "
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Name
Am
I Am
" 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. "
Sherman Alexie
Young
My Life
Personal
" 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. "
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You
Nobody
Assumptions
" My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror. "
Sherman Alexie
You
Writing
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" My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures. "
Sherman Alexie
Children
Rebel
Purpose
" 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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Having
Career
Kid
" I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture. "
Sherman Alexie
Respect
Culture
Participate
" 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. "
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Women
Think
Strong
" White Americans have a short memory. "
Sherman Alexie
White
Short Memory
Short
" We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization. "
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Indians
Indian
Been
" The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same. "
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Think
Tools
" Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming. "
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Nostalgia
Always
Doomed
" 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. "
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" I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture. "
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" But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic. "
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Attic
Real
Stuff