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And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel.
Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her.
And a little scared. Well, a lot scared. -- Sherman Alexie
You have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too. (191) -- Sherman Alexie
So I guess you were hopelessly romantic and easily distracted, a B-plus mother, certainly good enough to get into Matriarchal State University but not quite good enough for St. Mary's College of the Blessed Womb Warriors. -- Sherman Alexie
Nothing as white as the white girl an Indian boy loves. -- Sherman Alexie
Mostly, I just think Mr. P is a lonely old man who used to be a lonely young man. And for some reason I don't understand, lonely white people love to hang around lonelier Indians. -- Sherman Alexie
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. -- Sherman Alexie
I wasn't shocked and I'm still not shocked. It's total exploitation, with everything up for grabs. Health care, gone. Destroy the environment in search of more profit. State-sponsored violence. Targeted incarceration. You know what's happening, though: The whole country is becoming a reservation. -- Sherman Alexie
I felt brave all of a sudden. Yeah, maybe it was just a stupid and immature school yard fight. Or maybe it was the most important moment of my life. Maybe I was telling the world that I was no longer a human target. -- Sherman Alexie
It made me cry for myself. -- Sherman Alexie
She went searching for her dreams, and she didn't find them, but she made the attempt. -- Sherman Alexie
I got hundreds of emails insulting me, accusing me of being some caveman. I am by no means a Luddite. I have two iPods. I have a cell phone. I have cable TV, HDTV! -- Sherman Alexie
And if God hadn't wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn't have given us thumbs. So I thank God for my thumbs. -- Sherman Alexie
A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature. -- Sherman Alexie
At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future. -- Sherman Alexie
The professor ignored Lynn's comments and proceeded with his lecture. -- Sherman Alexie
I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's not a book culture. That's why I'm trying to make movies. Indians go to movies; Indians own video recorders. -- Sherman Alexie
Had she been hanging on to her dream of being a writer, but only barely hanging on, and something made her let go? -- Sherman Alexie
When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author. -- Sherman Alexie
But he wasn't ugly, just misplaced and marked by loneliness. -- Sherman Alexie
I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian. -- Sherman Alexie
They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents. -- Sherman Alexie
The white people always want to fight someone and they always get the dark-skinned people to do the fighting. -- Sherman Alexie
Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is. -- Sherman Alexie
Exoticism was hard to find in Pullman, Washington. -- Sherman Alexie
Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations. -- Sherman Alexie
I think I was born with a suitcase. -- Sherman Alexie
If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing. -- Sherman Alexie
Love and death," my father said. "It's all love and death. -- Sherman Alexie
When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner. -- Sherman Alexie
I didn't know what to do or say, so I just sat as quietly as he did. The silence got so big and real that it felt like three people sat on the porch. -- Sherman Alexie
As for romance, Frank had dated a few women over the years but found them to be too inconsistent and illogical, so he dated a few men and found them to be even more random and frightening. -- Sherman Alexie
Here's a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. -- Sherman Alexie
She knew Indians were obsessed with authenticity. Colonized, genocided, exiled, Indians formed their identities by questioning the identities of other Indians. Self-hating, -- Sherman Alexie
my nose bled like a firework -- Sherman Alexie
There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve. -- Sherman Alexie
Listen. I don't know how or when
My grieving will end, but I'm always
Relearning how to be human again. -- Sherman Alexie
I wanted to run faster than the speed of sound, but nobody,no matter how much pain they're in, can run that fast. -- Sherman Alexie
He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody. -- Sherman Alexie
(So I heard the boom of my fathr's rifle when he shot my best friend.) A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.(14) -- Sherman Alexie
I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature. -- Sherman Alexie
Well, as a native, as a colonized people you do live in the in between. The thing is I'm native. But necessarily because I'm a member of the country, I'm also a White American. -- Sherman Alexie
So I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me. -- Sherman Alexie
Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it's even more true today, even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean, a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bullshit, right? -- Sherman Alexie
Okay, so it's like each of these books is a mystery. Every book is a mystery. And if you read all of the books ever written, it's like you've read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you keep on learning so much more you need to learn. -- Sherman Alexie
Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.
You can do it. -- Sherman Alexie
But people forget. -- Sherman Alexie
Because they don't want to be perfect, because only God is perfect, Indian people sew flaws into their powwow regalia. My family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere on our regalia. But we always hid it so that you had to search really hard to find it. -- Sherman Alexie
Maria was staring at me like I was wearing purple socks.
'Wow," she said. "That's exactly what music is.'
And then she started crying again. But this time, she wept quietly.
'You understand," she said. 'You really understand. -- Sherman Alexie
He sang 'Stairway to Heaven' in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood. -- Sherman Alexie
one ponders. And when one ponders, one creates theories - hypotheses, to explain the world. -- Sherman Alexie
She'd wanted to completely shave her head: I don't want long hair, I don't want short hair, I don't want hair at all, and I don't want to be a girl or a boy, I want to be a yellow and orange leaf some little kid picks up and pastes in his scrapbook. -- Sherman Alexie
Good art is not universal. Bruce Willis is universal. -- Sherman Alexie
You can do it."
"I can do it."
Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together. -- Sherman Alexie
Sir, in your thirty-nine years as a parent, you broke your children's hearts, collectively and individually, 612 times and you did this without ever striking any human being in anger. Does this absence of physical violence make you a better man than you might otherwise have been? -- Sherman Alexie
What about me?" I asked. "Am I mean?" "You aren't mean to me with words," she said. "You're mean to me with your silences. -- Sherman Alexie
What's real? I ain't interested in what's real. I'm interested in how things should be. -- Sherman Alexie
magical realism? Aren't we all making shit up, -- Sherman Alexie
In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly. -- Sherman Alexie
I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders. -- Sherman Alexie
Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works. -- Sherman Alexie
Junior talks about it - relating to dozens if not hundreds of tribes. Even as the world tries to define you, narrow the definition of you, don't do it to yourself. True -- Sherman Alexie
More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years. -- Sherman Alexie
Rowdy and I played one-on-one for hours. we played until dark. we played until the streetlights lit up court. we played until the bats swooped down at our heads. we played until the moon was huge and golden and perfect in the dark sky.
we didn't keep score. -- Sherman Alexie
I wasn't just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo. -- Sherman Alexie
Coach said. "the quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor". -- Sherman Alexie
My sister is running away to get lost, but I am running away because I want to find something. And my parents love me so much that they want to help me. Yeah, Dad is a drunk and Mom is an ex-drunk, but they don't want their kids to be drunks. -- Sherman Alexie
World. Put down your fucking guns and pick up your kids. -- Sherman Alexie
She was so white his reservation eyes suffered. -- Sherman Alexie
He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful. -- Sherman Alexie
Last September 16th, I was walking in downtown Seattle when this pick-up truck pulls up in front of me. Guy leans out the window and yells, "Go back to your own country," and I was laughing so hard because it wasn't so much a hate crime as a crime of irony. -- Sherman Alexie
I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant. -- Sherman Alexie
I didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to people when they ask how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded? -- Sherman Alexie
The problem for me with liberals is that we've abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe. -- Sherman Alexie
Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap. -- Sherman Alexie
He was the loser Indian father of a loser Indian son living in a world built for winners. -- Sherman Alexie
I was young and frightened and craved respect and its ugly cousin, approval, so I did as I was told. -- Sherman Alexie
If human beings possessed endless possibilities, then cities contained exponential hopes. -- Sherman Alexie
If God were good, why would he create Rush Limbaugh? -- Sherman Alexie
But now I want it to pour. I want it to storm. I want to be clean. -- Sherman Alexie
There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap. -- Sherman Alexie
Because I'm an American, I know there's all sorts of international folks who would gladly kidnap and behead me. -- Sherman Alexie
I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature. -- Sherman Alexie
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. -- Sherman Alexie
Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it. -- Sherman Alexie
My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room. -- Sherman Alexie
Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss army knives. -- Sherman Alexie
I would close my eyes and dream of something strong, dream of horses exploding, rising into the air, their hearts beating survive, survive, survive. -- Sherman Alexie
Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community. -- Sherman Alexie
She wanted to find a way to love them in death, because she forgot how to love them in life. -- Sherman Alexie
We only know how to lose and be lost. -- Sherman Alexie
He was my best friend and I needed him. -- Sherman Alexie
Walked back into the house to feed myself and my illusions. -- Sherman Alexie
But how can I get enough experience if they don't give me a chance to get experience? -- Sherman Alexie
How can we imagine a new language when the language of the enemy keeps our dismembered tongues tied to his belt? -- Sherman Alexie
Sometimes we meet a character and we fall so hopelessly in love with him or her that we want to be that character, no matter how tough they have it, no matter how they might mess things up. -- Sherman Alexie
He didn't do much of anything except ride that bike and listen to music. -- Sherman Alexie
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. -- Sherman Alexie
What do you say to people when they ask you how it feels to lose everything? -- Sherman Alexie
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. -- Sherman Alexie
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. -- Sherman Alexie
And anger is never added to anger. It multiplies. -- Sherman Alexie
We're all travelling heavy with illusions. -- Sherman Alexie
The ordinary can be like medicine. -- Sherman Alexie
Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions. -- Sherman Alexie
Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable. -- Sherman Alexie
He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could. -- Sherman Alexie
Survival = Anger x Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation. -- Sherman Alexie
You can't sustain [anger]. You become bitter. Nothing's going to change. Anger leads to resentment, then to spiking your orange juice, then to martyrdom. -- Sherman Alexie
She'd teach him nineteen different ways to spell matriarchy. -- Sherman Alexie
boys can hold hands until they turn nine -- Sherman Alexie
(I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. maybe more important than my family.) Can your best friend be more importamt than your family? (24) -- Sherman Alexie
In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.' -- Sherman Alexie
What kind of life can you have in a house without books? -- Sherman Alexie
She told me that every other step was just for me.'
But that's only half of the dance,' I said.
Yeah,' my father said. 'She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy. -- Sherman Alexie
Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.
Come see the freak named after his deceased father.
Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.
Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone. -- Sherman Alexie
You have to treat your car with love. And I don't mean love of an object. You see, that's just wrong. That's materialism. You have to love your car like it's sentient being, like it can love you back. Now, that's some deep-down agape love. -- Sherman Alexie
I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating. -- Sherman Alexie
I am a zero on the rez. And if you subtract zero from zero, you still have zero. So what's the point of subtracting when the answer is always the same? -- Sherman Alexie
Non-Indian writers usually say "Great Spirit," "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four-Legged, and Winged." Mixed-blood writers usually say "Creator, "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four- Legged, and Winged." Indian writers usually say "God," "Mother Earth," "Human Being, Dog, and Bird." -- Sherman Alexie
Here's the score. Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more. -- Sherman Alexie
How much do we remember of what hurts us most? I've been thinking about pain, how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now. How each successive pain distorts the preceding. -- Sherman Alexie
In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is. -- Sherman Alexie
I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot. -- Sherman Alexie
If I stand at this window long enough
I will see the long thread of history
float randomly through the breeze.
This is all I know about peace. -- Sherman Alexie
So, back in the day, weird people threatened the strength of the tribe. If you weren't good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own." "But we're not primitive like that anymore." "Oh, yes, we are. Weird people still get banished." "You mean weird people like -- Sherman Alexie
The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know. -- Sherman Alexie
Is there really a difference between that killing and this killing? Does God approve of some killing and not other killing? If I kill these soldiers so that Small Saint and Bow Boy can escape, does that make me a hero? -- Sherman Alexie
I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal. -- Sherman Alexie
Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write. -- Sherman Alexie
This is who I am. This is who I have always been. I am in pain. I am always in pain. But I always find my way to the story. And I always find my way home. -- Sherman Alexie
My mullet was an insecurity shield. My mullet was an ethnic hatchet. My mullet was an arrow on fire.
My mullet said to the literary world, Hello, you privileged prep-school assholes, I'm here to steal your thunder, lightning, and book sales. -- Sherman Alexie
I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing. It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy. And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change -- Sherman Alexie
I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me. -- Sherman Alexie
Late at night I go out and listen to the wind. That's all the wisdom I need. I mean, I love books, but shoot, most of the world's wisdom is not contained in books. -- Sherman Alexie
And then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two
depending on your definition of what I did to Custer ... -- Sherman Alexie
I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture. -- Sherman Alexie
In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do. -- Sherman Alexie
Son," Mr. P said. "You're going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation. -- Sherman Alexie
I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants. -- Sherman Alexie
Regarding love, marriage, and sex, both Shakespeare and Sitting Bull knew the only truth: treaties get broken. -- Sherman Alexie
Is God a man or a woman?
God could be an armadillo. I have no idea. -- Sherman Alexie
Yes, I have often battled Grief. / Both of us used our teeth. -- Sherman Alexie
I ain't interested in the truth. I'm interested in the way things should be. -- Sherman Alexie
Held on to me like I was a baby. And she kept crying. So many tears. My clothes and hair were soaked with her tears. It was, like, my mother had given me a grief shower, you know? Like she'd baptized me with her pain. -- Sherman Alexie
Mary was a bright and shining star," Mr. P said. "And then she faded year by year until you could barely see her anymore. -- Sherman Alexie
I keep writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and reediting. It became my grieving ceremony. -- Sherman Alexie
Poetry = Anger x Imagination -- Sherman Alexie
If it's fiction, then it better be true. -- Sherman Alexie
If Heaven ain't filled with gender-swapping Indians," I said, "then I don't want to go there. -- Sherman Alexie
Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against the starvation. We survived because we trusted one another. -- Sherman Alexie
If you weren't good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own. -- Sherman Alexie
Corliss had never once considered the fate of library books. She'd never wondered how many books go unread. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an inconsiderate lover, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier. -- Sherman Alexie
But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer. -- Sherman Alexie
She thought she could be saved. She thought he could take her hand and owldance her around the circle. She thought she could watch him fancydance, watch his calf muscles grow more and more perfect with each step. She thought he was Crazy Horse. -- Sherman Alexie
I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5) -- Sherman Alexie
Ialways think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during the first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians.
So I'm never quite sure why we eat Turkey like everybody else. (101) -- Sherman Alexie
For the rest of our lives, all we can hear are our names chanted over and over, until we are deaf to everything else. -- Sherman Alexie
He'd promise to see an organic nutritionist, aromatherapist, deep-tissue masseuse, feng shui consultant, yoga master, and Mormon stand-up comedian if those promises would help him get off this mountain. -- Sherman Alexie
What if someone picks on me?" I asked
Then I'll pick on them".
What if someone picks my nose?" I asked.
The I'll pick your nose, too" Rowdy said. -- Sherman Alexie
Yep, I have to admit that isosceles triangles make me feel hormonal. -- Sherman Alexie
All I owe the world is my art -- Sherman Alexie
It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away. -- Sherman Alexie
Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds. -- Sherman Alexie
No, " Miss Warren said. "Your sister, she's dead -- Sherman Alexie
I mean, I don't think you're supposed to have sex with people you don't love. I know, I know, I know. People do it all the time. But I really think you're supposed to be a little bit in love with them. At least a tiny bit. -- Sherman Alexie
But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards. -- Sherman Alexie
Sharing dark skin doesn't necessarily make two men brothers -- Sherman Alexie
Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn't pay well at all. -- Sherman Alexie
Environmentalism is a luxury. Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes. Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot. -- Sherman Alexie
Also because I'm ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I'm half of whatever they are. -- Sherman Alexie
And finally this, when the sun was falling down so beautiful we didn't have time to give it a name, she held the child born of white mother and red father and said,' Both sides of this baby are beautiful'. -- Sherman Alexie
She's the Sandwhich Lady."
"Excuse me?"
"She delivers sandwiches to the homeless."
"Really. I can't imagine her in such a role."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, she always seems so impulsive, so emotional. What's the word I'm searching for? So individualistic. Not tribal at all ... -- Sherman Alexie
You wouldn't think there is anything life threatening about speech impediments, but let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous than being a kid with a stutter and a lisp. -- Sherman Alexie
Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They're attracted to more than surface. -- Sherman Alexie
Being colonized automatically makes you bipolar. -- Sherman Alexie
there are times when the last thing you want to hear is the truth. -- Sherman Alexie
How many books do you have here?" Corliss asked. "Two million, one hundred thousand, and eleven," the librarian said proudly, but Corliss was frightened. What happens to the world when that many books go unread? And what happens to the unread authors of those unread books? -- Sherman Alexie
I learned how to stop crying.
I learned how to hide inside of myself.
I learned how to be somebody else.
I learned how to be cold and numb. -- Sherman Alexie
I didn't literally kill Indians. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture. -- Sherman Alexie
A century ago she might have been beautiful, her face reflected in the river instead of a mirror. But all the years have changed more than the shape of our blood and eyes. We wear fear now like a turquoise choker, like a familiar shawl. -- Sherman Alexie
The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more. -- Sherman Alexie
Nobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear. And in this country [US], magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears. And if people can't see that or don't want to talk about it, I don't understand them at all. -- Sherman Alexie
I was crying because I had broken my best friend's heart. -- Sherman Alexie
It's a weird thing. Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear. But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten the reservations were meant to be death camps. -- Sherman Alexie
Listen" said Mather. "I understand what you're going through, I really do. An Indian woman in college. I understand. I'm a Marxist."
Really," said Marie. "I'm a Libra. -- Sherman Alexie
Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk. -- Sherman Alexie
Seattle is Sweden! Extremely liberal, progressive, and very white, with a strong undercurrent of racism. -- Sherman Alexie
You have to get very comfortable with the idea of being lonely. For all of human history, we've always run away from being lonely and now there are even more distractions. But that's the thing - if you're going to make the decision to rebel against your tribe, you're going to get very lonely. -- Sherman Alexie
When you're depressed, you know, it's like the world has ended. Even getting out of bed takes the most massive amount of effort. But when you're manic, oh, it's so addicting. You know, I have finished novels in two weeks in manic stages. -- Sherman Alexie
We didn't talk. Didn't need to talk. -- Sherman Alexie
People can do things completely against their nature, completely. It's like some tiny earthquake comes roaring through your body and soul, and it's the only earthquake you'll ever feel. But it damages so much, cracks the foundations of your life forever. -- Sherman Alexie
They wanted to help me with my pain. -- Sherman Alexie
That's right, I am a book kisser. -- Sherman Alexie
Yep, my daddy was an undependable drunk. But he'd never missed any of my organized games, concerts, plays, or picnics. He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could. (189) -- Sherman Alexie
I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. (217) -- Sherman Alexie
There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons. -- Sherman Alexie
Of course, she didn't care about me. She mostly made fun of me. But that just made me love her even more. She was out of my league, and even though I was only twelve, I knew that I'd be one of those guys who always fell in love with the unreachable, ungettable, and uninterested. -- Sherman Alexie
My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac. -- Sherman Alexie
I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in. -- Sherman Alexie
When you resort to violence to prove a point, you've just experienced a profound failure of imagination. -- Sherman Alexie
Who cares if a man wants to marry another man? All i want to know is who's going to ick up all the dirty socks? -- Sherman Alexie
Writing is a lonely business. -- Sherman Alexie
I know a lot about being white - because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day. -- Sherman Alexie
There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107) -- Sherman Alexie
Summer coming like a car from down the highway. -- Sherman Alexie
One play can change your momentum forever. -- Sherman Alexie
Of course, ever since white people showed up and brought along their Christianity and their fears of eccentricity, Indians have gradually lost all of their tolerance. -- Sherman Alexie
Late one day James and I watch the sun fly across the sky like a basketball on fire until it falls down completely and lands in Benjamin Lake with a splash and shakes the ground and even wakes up Lester FallsApart who thought it was his father come back to slap his face again. -- Sherman Alexie
Every Indian kid has access to MySpace and Facebook. But that doesn't mean they have access to books and great teachers. This idea about bringing digital tech into schools is great, but once again I'll say that this is not how people actually learn. -- Sherman Alexie
I remember when people used to think I was smart.
I remember when people used to think my brain was useful.
Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical. -- Sherman Alexie
Dear wife, I'm sorry that I am mysteriously incapable of folding clean laundry, but I iron, oh, I iron. Sweetheart, I'll make your white shirt so crisp and sharp that it will split atoms as you walk. -- Sherman Alexie
That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty. -- Sherman Alexie
cry huge, gasping tears. -- Sherman Alexie
There were all sorts of myths and legends surrounding the lake. I mean, we're Indians, and we like to make up shit about lakes, you know? -- Sherman Alexie
Am I defined by what I've seen, or do I define the world by what I've witnessed? O, what beautiful or terrible thing waits around the next corner? Who isn't in love with this mystery? -- Sherman Alexie
I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators. -- Sherman Alexie
When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn't get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven't read yet. That's how I view that I'm rich. I have hardcover books I may never read. -- Sherman Alexie
I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage. -- Sherman Alexie
Sometimes I caught my mother digging through old photo albums or staring at the wall or out the window. She'd get that look on her face that I knew meant she missed my father. Not enough to want him back. She missed him just enough for it to hurt. On -- Sherman Alexie
Like officer Dave.He's never said much about his life, but I can tell he's scarred. And he knows I'm scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.
-- Sherman Alexie
Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy. -- Sherman Alexie
I believe in any kid's ability to read any book and form their own judgments. It's the job of a parent to guide his/her child through the reading of every book imaginable. Censorship of any form punishes curiosity. -- Sherman Alexie
The reservation doesn't sing anymore but the songs still hang in the air. Every molecule waits for a drumbeat; every element dreams lyrics. Today I am walking between water, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, and the energy expelled is named Forgiveness. -- Sherman Alexie
I loved the smell of ocean water. Salt always smells like memory. -- Sherman Alexie
But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me. -- Sherman Alexie
He says the earth is an oval marble that nobody can win. He says the sky is not blue and the grass is not green.
He says everything is a matter of perception. -- Sherman Alexie
Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated. -- Sherman Alexie
I knew I was being an idiot. But I figured if I kept being an idiot, if I didn't actually accept the truth, then the truth would become false. -- Sherman Alexie
I look more Indian when I'm serious. -- Sherman Alexie
9.
In the darkness, her dark body grows darker
until I am making love to her and her shadow. -- 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. -- Sherman Alexie
If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don't want to dance, then you're going to have to work extra hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango. -- Sherman Alexie
Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I am a blank sky, a human solar eclipse. -- Sherman Alexie
It's just me and James walking and walking except he's on my back and his eyes are looking past the people who are looking past us for the coyote of our soul and the wolverine of our heart and the crazy crazy man that touches every Indian who spends too much time alone. -- Sherman Alexie
Sure, we thought the acres
That we tilled were sacred,
But how could we have known
That wheat can haunt like ghosts -- Sherman Alexie
Okay, so maybe I'm romantic ... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier. -- Sherman Alexie
I know that death is never added to death; it multiplies. -- Sherman Alexie
If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time. -- Sherman Alexie
I began to count mile markers, made mental lists of everything I really needed: a new pair of shoes, a winter coat for the baby, a ticket for a Greyhound traveling back or ahead five hundred years. -- Sherman Alexie
What do you have to worry about? That you're lonely? That you have a mortgage? That your wife doesn't love you? F you, F you. I have to worry about having enough to eat! -- Sherman Alexie
Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle? -- Sherman Alexie
She braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep
roots buried in the earth
she told me the old stories
how time never mattered
when she died
they gave me her clock -- Sherman Alexie
He could see his uncles slugging each other with such force that they had to be in love. Strangers would never want to hurt each other that badly. -- Sherman Alexie
But it wasn't okay. It was about as far from okay as you can get. If okay was the earth, then I was standing on Jupiter. I don't know why I said it was okay. For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart yet again. -- Sherman Alexie
Then I remember that God is really, really old. So maybe God has God arthritis. And maybe that's why the world sucks. Maybe God's hands and fingers don't work as well as they used to. -- Sherman Alexie
My father went on a legendary drinking binge. My mother went to church every single day. It was all booze and God, booze and God, booze and God. -- Sherman Alexie
I'm quite aware of my differences. I wouldn't classify them as weird -- Sherman Alexie
But she was beautiful, with hair and eyes so dark and long. He imagined she was a reservation eclipse. Full. He needed special glasses to look at her; he could barely survive her reflection. "You're a constellation," he said. -- Sherman Alexie
I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense. -- Sherman Alexie
That's how it was." "How do you kill somebody accidentally?" -- Sherman Alexie
There's never enough time to change your life. You don't get to change your life, period. -- Sherman Alexie
I often wonder why I am the one who remember all the pain? -- Sherman Alexie
The percentage of Indian kids doing some sort of artistic work is much higher than in the general population - painting, drawing, dancing, singing. The creation of art is still an everyday part of Indian culture, unlike the dominant culture, where art is sort of peripheral. -- Sherman Alexie
We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization. -- Sherman Alexie
The earth is our grandmother and that technology has become our mother and that they both hate each other. -- Sherman Alexie
[F]rank knew he was guilty of arrogance and misanthropy, but he compensated by being kind to strangers and tipping really well at restaurants. -- Sherman Alexie
In the indigenous world, we assign sacred value to circles. But sometimes a circle just means you keep returning to the same shit again and again. This book is a series of circles, sacred and profane. -- Sherman Alexie
I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats. -- Sherman Alexie
Nothing ever really happens, you know. Life is infinitesimal and incremental and inconsequential. -- Sherman Alexie
I thought that once I figured out thirteen, then it was history, -- Sherman Alexie
Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands. -- Sherman Alexie
Those Montana Indians were so tough that white people were scared of them.
Can you imagine a place where white people are scared of Indians and not the other way around?
That's Montana. -- Sherman Alexie
Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming. -- Sherman Alexie
On a reservation, Indian men who abandon their children are treated worse than white fathers who do the same thing. It's because white men have been doing that forever and Indian men have just learned how. That's how assimilation can work. -- Sherman Alexie
It's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of words -- Sherman Alexie
You should approach each book
you should approach life
with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point. -- Sherman Alexie
But I'm also addicted to books. And I know there has never been a human being or a television show, no matter how great, that could measure up to a great book. -- Sherman Alexie
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the sign of a superior mind is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. -- Sherman Alexie
Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written, it's like you've read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn. -- Sherman Alexie
I mean, why are you trying so hard to impress me? I'm really sorry your mother died, but it doesn't mean much to me ... -- Sherman Alexie
And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you are. You're just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia. -- Sherman Alexie
When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer. -- Sherman Alexie
We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye. -- Sherman Alexie
I can take a single hair from the braids of an Indian woman and make it sound like a promise come true. Like a thousand promises come true. -- Sherman Alexie
You can't teach at our school if you don't live in the compound. It was like some kind of prison-work farm for our liberal, white, vegetarian do-gooders and conservative, white missionary saviors. -- Sherman Alexie
If the government wants to hide somebody, there's probably no place more isolated than my reservation, which is located approximately one million miles north of Important and two billion miles west of Happy. -- Sherman Alexie
I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not. -- Sherman Alexie
The morning of the game, I'd woken up in my rez house so my dad could drive me the twenty-two miles to Reardan, so I could get on the team bus for the ride back to the reservation.
Crazy. -- Sherman Alexie
How often had men sat around dinner tables and discussed women's lives, their choices, and the reasons why one woman reached across the bed to touch another woman? -- Sherman Alexie
At what point do we just re-create the people who have disappeared from our lives? -- Sherman Alexie
If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong. -- Sherman Alexie
I've seen only painters and fishermen and I think they're both the same kind of men who made a different choice one time in their lives. The fisherman held a rod in his hand and said yes and the painter held a brush in his hand and said yes and sometimes I hold a beer in my hand and say yes. -- Sherman Alexie
So Lightning says to Mud,
"What would happen if I struck your blood?"
And Mud says, "Brother,
It would hurt,
And make me the mother
Of every living thing.
But, Fire Boy, you ain't lifting my grass skirt
Until you burn me a ring. -- Sherman Alexie
Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies. -- Sherman Alexie
White Americans have a short memory. -- Sherman Alexie
4.
On the first night of our honeymoon
we lie in bed, too exhausted for sex
or conversation. Instead, we listen
to the surf, wave after wave after wave. -- Sherman Alexie
Father Arnold finished the ceremony and asked if anybody had any final words for the dearly departed.
"Final words?" Chess asked, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop talking about this. -- Sherman Alexie
Don't live up to your stereotypes. -- Sherman Alexie
One morning she sewed while her son and husband watched television. It was so quiet that when her son released a tremendous fart, a mouse, startled from his hiding place beneath my aunt's sewing chair, ran straight up her pant leg. -- Sherman Alexie
Things had gotten so intense, so painful, that my body just checked out. Yep, my mind and soul and heart had a quick meeting and voted to shut down for a few repairs. -- Sherman Alexie
We lived in a small house, so there was no escape from the goddamn racket of her loneliness. -- Sherman Alexie
I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious. -- Sherman Alexie
In order to know somebody through their words, I mean, it has to be an, it has to be a letter, you know? It has to be a long e-mail. It has to be a five-page hand-written letter, you know, it has to be overwhelming and messy and sloppy as humans are. -- Sherman Alexie
And I know there has never been a human being or a television show, no matter how great, that could measure up to a great book. But -- Sherman Alexie
And he only talks about his dreams with me. And I only talk about my dreams with him. -- Sherman Alexie
Joey and Big Ed loved each other with the kind of straight-boy-devotion that started wars, terror attacks, and video game companies. -- Sherman Alexie
You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop. -- Sherman Alexie
Well of course man. We Indians have lost everything. We lost our native land, we lost our languages, we lost our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost. -- Sherman Alexie
It was July. Crazy hot and dry. It hadn't rained in, like, sixty days. Drought hot. Scorpion hot. Vultures flying circles in the sky hot. -- Sherman Alexie
It's not whether you win or lose, it's about how you play the game. -- Sherman Alexie
Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred. -- Sherman Alexie
I would steal horses
for you, if there were any left -- Sherman Alexie
He doesn't hurt you because you're the only good thing in his life. He doesn't want to give that up. It's the only thing he hasn't given up. -- Sherman Alexie
My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world. -- Sherman Alexie
My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures. -- Sherman Alexie
What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment. -- Sherman Alexie
Grief is when you feel so helpless and stupid that you think nothing will ever be right again, and your macaroni and cheese tastes like sawdust, and you can't even jerk off because it seems like too much trouble. (172) -- Sherman Alexie
Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter and I have fun. But I don't think anybody learns anything about me as a person. -- Sherman Alexie
I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there. -- Sherman Alexie
Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection,
What happens to the soul that hates its reflection? -- Sherman Alexie
Everybody prayed; everybody lied about it. Even atheists prayed on airplanes and bingo nights. -- Sherman Alexie
Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained. -- Sherman Alexie
Last night I dreamed about television. I woke up crying. -- Sherman Alexie
They call me an apple because they think I'm red on the outside and white on the inside. -- Sherman Alexie
I mean, you have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too -- Sherman Alexie
If I had a baseball bat and bulldozer, maybe I could stop him. But without real weapons, without a pistol, a man-eating lion, and a vial of bubonic plague, I had zero change of competing against him. -- Sherman Alexie
I had left the tribe, and I was being punished for that. -- Sherman Alexie
Inside their small house, Grace listened as Roman stood from the couch and walked into the bathroom. He sat down to piss. She thought that Roman's sit-down pisses were one of the most romantic and caring things that any man had ever done for any woman. After -- Sherman Alexie
I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children. -- Sherman Alexie
I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents. -- Sherman Alexie
Fuck you,' Samuel said as he stole the ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed, rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax, close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk. -- Sherman Alexie
But God has a way of making things even out, I guess. -- Sherman Alexie
How self-centered, how arrogant ... Imagine the awesome privilege of living in a society where you get to choose what you eat at each and every meal. When I was a kid, I was a vegetarian and a vegan for long stretches ... I was a commodity cheese-atarian. -- Sherman Alexie
Unlike landed white men, she didn't need to climb mountains to experience mystic panic. All she needed was to set her alarm dock for the next morning, wake when it rang, and go to class. -- Sherman Alexie
I'm a poet who can whine in meter -- Sherman Alexie
Surrounded by five hundred years of convenient lies. -- Sherman Alexie
Funny how a little politeness can change people's minds. -- Sherman Alexie
He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. -- Sherman Alexie
I can't remember how to cry. -- Sherman Alexie
Because I want to be remembered. -- Sherman Alexie
Rowdy fought everybody.
He fought boys and girls.
Men and women.
He fought stray dogs.
Hell, he fought the weather.
He'd throw wild punches at rain.
Honestly. -- Sherman Alexie
My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance. -- Sherman Alexie
Books and beer are the best and worst defense. -- Sherman Alexie
Let us now celebrate the literary allusion. -- Sherman Alexie
The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not." I -- Sherman Alexie
And I laughed because half of me was happy and half of me wasn't sure what else to do. -- Sherman Alexie
I want to rasp into sober cryptology and say something dynamic, but tonight is my laundry night. -- Sherman Alexie
Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito ... -- Sherman Alexie
My father is an amazing man. -- Sherman Alexie
Junior based all of his decisions on his dreams and visions, which created a lot of problems. -- Sherman Alexie
I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture. -- Sherman Alexie
My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people. -- Sherman Alexie
So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation. -- Sherman Alexie
Because someone needs to help you die the right way," she said. "And we both know that dying ain't something you ever done before. -- Sherman Alexie
Imagine Columbus landed in 1492 and some tribe or another drowned him in the ocean. Would Lester FallsApart still be shoplifting in the 7-11? -- Sherman Alexie
She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks. -- Sherman Alexie
Spiritual matters should be private. -- Sherman Alexie
It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame. -- Sherman Alexie
If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads. -- Sherman Alexie
But a person can be genocided-can have every connection to his past severed- and live to be an old man whose rib cage is a haunted house built around his heart. -- Sherman Alexie
all about reaction as opposed to action. -- Sherman Alexie
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? -- Sherman Alexie
Sharon was Apache, and I was Spokane, but we practiced our tribal religions like we practiced Catholicism: We loved all of the ceremonies but thought they were pitiful cries to a disinterested god. -- Sherman Alexie
I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it. -- Sherman Alexie
I wanted to live up to expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And -- Sherman Alexie
I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well. -- Sherman Alexie
Jeez, it was a lot of pressure to put on a kid. I was carrying the burden of my race, you know? I was going to get a bad back from it. -- Sherman Alexie
You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture. -- Sherman Alexie
I was emotionally erect. -- Sherman Alexie
In this world, we must love the liars or go unloved -- Sherman Alexie
I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent. -- Sherman Alexie
Your mother is a better man than me. Mothers are almost always better men than men are. -- Sherman Alexie
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. -- Sherman Alexie
If you care about something enough, it's going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad. Arnold, get mad. -- Sherman Alexie
I thought maybe if you wore different clothes at school,' Paul said, 'maybe you could start a trend. You'd be original.' 'Oh, my God,' she said. 'It's high school, Dad. People get beat up for being original. -- Sherman Alexie
Shoving hot bread up a roasting bird's ass & feasting on it seems like an apt celebration of colonialism. -- Sherman Alexie
A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy. -- Sherman Alexie
I'm a freak with power. -- Sherman Alexie
She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too. -- Sherman Alexie
He smiled mysteriously. Adults are so good at smiling mysteriously. Do they go to college for that? -- Sherman Alexie
He likes to pretend he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life. -- Sherman Alexie
In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions. -- Sherman Alexie
Coyote: A small canid (Canis latrans) native to western North America that is closely related to the American wolf and whose cry has often been compared to that of Sippie Wallace and Janis Joplin, amongst others. -- Sherman Alexie
If I were a doctor nobody would be inviting me to talk to reservations. I'd be a different person. Writers can influence more people. -- Sherman Alexie
Seymour looked around the Tucson McDonald's. There were white people and Mavajos; there were people who preferred their Quarter Pounders with cheese and those who didn't care for cheese at all; and there were those who desperately wish that McDonald's would introduce onion rings to its menu. -- Sherman Alexie
We order Diet since my father and I are both diabetic. Genetics, you know? -- Sherman Alexie
All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them. -- Sherman Alexie
My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror. -- Sherman Alexie
There's always time to change your life. -- Sherman Alexie
I am still looking for a job. They keep telling me I don't have enough experience. But how can I get enough experience if they don't give me a chance to get experience? Oh, well. -- Sherman Alexie
A bullet costs 2 cents, anyone can afford that -- Sherman Alexie
She shook my hand, loosely, like Indians do, using only her fingers. Not like those tight grips that white people use to prove something. She touched my hand like she was glad to see me, not like she wanted to break bones. -- Sherman Alexie
Naked women + right hand = happy happy joy joy -- Sherman Alexie
You're cute and smart, and you've gotten everything you've ever asked for, and that makes you lazy and dangerous." "Wow, -- Sherman Alexie
We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to. -- Sherman Alexie
What scares me least? The Afterlife. Really. Who cares? I'm going to be a good person no matter what is supposed to happen after I die. -- Sherman Alexie
You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it. -- Sherman Alexie
Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. -- Sherman Alexie
We are taught to take the bread into our bodies as proof of Jesus's body. -- Sherman Alexie
Elvis Presley is still showing up in 7-11 stores across the country, even though he's been dead for years, so I figure music just might be the most important thing there is. -- Sherman Alexie
And that's when I knew that I was going to be okay. -- Sherman Alexie
Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear. -- Sherman Alexie
And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God. -- Sherman Alexie
It's not like anybody's going to notice if you go away," he said. "So you might as well gut it out." Isn't -- Sherman Alexie
In all those stories, I could fly. -- Sherman Alexie
Whites and Indians laughed at most of the same jokes, but they laughed for different reasons. -- Sherman Alexie
Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint. -- Sherman Alexie
I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots. -- Sherman Alexie
Taste failure in the tap water, -- Sherman Alexie
He made me realize that hard work
that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task
is joyous -- Sherman Alexie
There is a good day to die and there is a good day to play the piano. -- Sherman Alexie
Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. -- Sherman Alexie
Branch by branch, Rowdy and I climbed toward the top of the tree, to the bottom of the sky. -- Sherman Alexie
A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that. -- Sherman Alexie
I end up feeling like a spy in the house of ethnicity, you know? Because people will talk around me as they would talk around the people in their cultural group. So I get to hear all the secrets and jokes and you know, I'm a part of every community because of the way I look. -- Sherman Alexie
You have to dream big to get big. -- Sherman Alexie
I pretended I belonged. -- Sherman Alexie
Sometimes it's called passing out and sometimes it's just pretending to be asleep -- Sherman Alexie
If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything. -- Sherman Alexie
He was going to punish me now. He couldn't beat me up with his old man fists, but he could hurt me with his old man words. -- Sherman Alexie
Swore he told us not to slow dance with our skeletons. -- Sherman Alexie
She kissed him like he was a warrior; she kissed him like she was a warrior. -- Sherman Alexie
Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play. -- Sherman Alexie
But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic. -- Sherman Alexie
God, I wanted to be forgiven, but an apology offered to a dead man is only a selfish apology to yourself. -- Sherman Alexie
That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people. -- Sherman Alexie
Our love will be loud, and it will be bright. -- Sherman Alexie
Hunger is my crime. -- Sherman Alexie
I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. -- Sherman Alexie
But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other. -- Sherman Alexie
He said his prayers just in case his parents had been wrong about God all those years. -- Sherman Alexie
How does one survive these revelations? One just lives. -- Sherman Alexie
All art is exploitation. -- Sherman Alexie