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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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'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. "

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

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

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

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

" 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. "

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

" All I owe the world is my art. "

" Spiritual matters should be private. "

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

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

" White Americans have a short memory. "

" My father is an amazing man. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" Writing is a lonely business. "

" All art is exploitation. "

" 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.' "