Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

" Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming. "

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

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

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

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

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

" Writing is a lonely business. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" All art is exploitation. "

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

" 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. "

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

" White Americans have a short memory. "

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

" 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.' "

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

" Spiritual matters should be private. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "