Sherman Alexie Quotes

Art must not serve might.

Imagine if someone like John Lennon or Bob Marley, Sid Vicious, Picasso, whomever, were doing their work, and some corporation, some CEO, some branding entity was saying to you, 'Well, you can do that, but you've got to remove this aspect of your work.' There would no longer be that purity anymore.

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.

A lot of artists are much more concerned about how their work is used and how it's disseminated. That, to artists, is as important as the money, for some people.

But I think theatre in a repressive society is an immensely exciting event and theatre in a luxurious old, affluent old society like ours is an entertaining event.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

I am not like Hitchcock, directing the reaction of the public or the audience. I don't like that. I think this is some kind of fascism - 'You need to react like that.' No. No. It's not like this; everyone needs to react as he can.

In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.

It's important for any artist - particularly female artists - to feel completely comfortable and to know what they're trying to do.

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

When people start yammering about artistic responsibility, artists become wary. The subtext of such talk is that the arts need to be regulated, which is to say censored.

That DMC Act is a disgrace. And the problem with independent art in this country is that independent artists have been economically blacklisted.

Science fiction was one of those places, particularly during the McCarthy era, where you could write whatever you wanted because it was beneath contempt. They didn't bother censoring it.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

There's a good many pictures I'd like to make; we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.

When the business starts shaping the art, or the delivery of the art, then it's not right.

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

Throughout history, self-styled arbiters have taken it upon themselves to decide the question of what can or cannot be the legitimate purview of art.

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

A bunch of comedians have gotten in 'trouble' for sharing their views. When an actor or an artist or might come out saying something political or whatever, then it becomes about that view.

The second you feel a political imperative, it destroys your art.