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.
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
There are many ways to calm a negative energy without suppressing or fighting it. You recognize it, you smile to it, and you invite something nicer to come up and replace it; you read some inspiring words, you listen to a piece of beautiful music, you go somewhere in nature, or you do some walking meditation.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil - not the strength to choose between the two.
It is not inspiration; it is expiration.
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