Quotes from Sherman Alexie

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

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.'

Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.

Unlike landed white men, she didn't need to climb mountains to experience mystic panic. All she needed was to set her alarm dock for the next morning, wake when it rang, and go to class.

The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.

I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me.

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.

Since Jesus was human then he most assuredly farted and burped. And if God did create us in God's image then God must fart and burp as well.

We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.

Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.

When you resort to violence to prove a point, you've just experienced a profound failure of imagination.

Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.

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.

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

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

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.

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.

Okay, so maybe I'm romantic... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier.

If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.

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

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

Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.

All art is exploitation.

Spiritual matters should be private.