Top 35 Sherman Alexie Quotes

I look more Indian when I’m serious.

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

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.

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

All art is exploitation.

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

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.

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

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.

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

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

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

In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do.

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.

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My father is an amazing man.

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

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.

All I owe the world is my art.

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