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

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" 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. "

" All I owe the world is my art. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" White Americans have a short memory. "

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

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

" Spiritual matters should be private. "

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

" All art is exploitation. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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 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. "

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

" My father is an amazing man. "

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

" 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. "

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

" 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. "