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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. "

Sherman Alexie

Who

Basketball

Political

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" Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" Spiritual matters should be private. "

" Writing is a lonely business. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

Sherman Alexie

Name

I Am

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

" 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. "

Sherman Alexie

Her

Own

" 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. "

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

Sherman Alexie

Live

Your

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

" 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. "

" You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop. "

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

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

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

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

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

" All art is exploitation. "

Sherman Alexie

Exploitation

Art

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