Sherman Alexie Quotes

Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members.

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix.

I am trying to persuade my family to spend more time in China. It's no fun to be in exile. I can't even figure out the basic 26 letters, let alone operate, in English. I often feel that although I've found the sky of freedom above my head, I've lost the soil I stand on. I need to be back in my motherland, where I can find inspirations.

It saddens me to know that I jeopardized the welfare of the kind people of Hawaii, a community that I love and call my home.

When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities - how we treat one another when we are not being stupid - what I find is deeply Aboriginal.

I clearly have done things that were wrong. I've clearly had to seek God's forgiveness.

Part of my whole project from the beginning was to make an absent world present for my parents, which was India.

Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging.

I'm constantly meeting people that I hurt, you know? This is not - when I go and talk about these things, this is not a theoretical - it's not a theoretical apology. It's something that I live every day.

I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up.

By healing the internal issues that we can heal as a people, our children don't have to suffer the same agony and pain that we put each other through.

I actually want to hold on to where I came from, and also I want to be at this bar in Brooklyn, even if I'm not drinking at all. What does that tension look like? It's less an attack on the parents and more an interrogation of personal guilt, personal responsibility. That's my internal dialogue.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past.

If I cried me a river of all my confessions, would I drown in my shallow regret?

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

The Kite Runner is a story of two boys and a father, and the strange love triangle that binds them.

There was a time when I believed I was the redeemed one, the boy borne safely home on the ebb of whatever freak tide carried Peter and Jamie away. Not any more. In ways too dark and crucial to be called metaphorical, I never left that wood.

I remember many years ago, I asked [Dalai Lama] about exile and he said: "Well, exile is good because it's brought me and my people closer to reality," and reality is almost a shrine before which he sits. Exile brings us up against the wall and forces us to rise to the challenge of the moment.

Not even for an hour can you bear to be alone, nor can you advantageously apply your leisure time, but you endeavor, a fugitive and wanderer, to escape from yourself, now vainly seeking to banish remorse by wine, and now by sleep; but the gloomy companion presses on you, and pursues you as you fly.

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish.

The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history... Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.

I nod, because I do understand. I'm just not sure how to go about divorcing myself from the evil I've already accepted.

The word 'confession,' to me, means needing to be absolved. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking people to understand. I'd like to think that I tell stories and sometimes my life weaves through it.

If you can't forgive, don't ask to be forgiven.