He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep desire for art and creativity to have a healing and transformative impact on people's lives.
Sherman Alexie's quote illustrates the profound belief that storytelling and music have the power to inspire and uplift individuals from their struggles. By wanting these forms of expression to 'save everybody,' it highlights the role of art as a universal remedy that can connect, heal, and provide solace in times of hardship, emphasizing the responsibility of artists to create work that resonates deeply with the human experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of the arts in community healing.
Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.
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 draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.
We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.
I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.
I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop.
Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.
They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.
We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart
We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.
Cynicism cripples our imagination and limits our ability to see faint possibilities amidst glaring problems.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.