Quotes from Sherman Alexie

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

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

I ain't interested in the truth. I'm interested in the way things should be.

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

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

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

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

She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.

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.

White Americans have a short memory.

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

Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling," she used to say. "Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.

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.

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

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous

Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.

The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.

All I owe the world is my art.

If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance.

Let us now celebrate the literary allusion. Let us now celebrate the trope and willful enjambment. Let us now celebrate the assonance and alliteration of all of it. Let us now celebrate the sound of our own voices.