Sherman Alexie > Quotes

“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian In The World

“Poetry = Anger x Imagination”
― Sherman Alexie

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.”
― Sherman Alexie

“If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.”
― Sherman Alexie

“When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.

And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.

Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.

We lived and died together.

All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.

And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.

And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“That's right, I am a book kisser.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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

“She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks. ”
― Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians

“We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.”
― Sherman Alexie

“Everyone I have lost
in the closing of a door
the click of the lock

is not forgotten, they
do not die but remain
within the soft edges
of the earth, the ash

of house fires and cancer
in sin and forgiveness
huddled under old blankets

dreaming their way into
my hands, my heart
closing tight like fists.

- "Indian Boy Love Song #1”
― Sherman Alexie, The Business of Fancydancing

“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.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“My grandmother's greatest gift was tolerance. Now, in the old days, Indians used to be forgiving of any kind of eccentricity. In fact, weird people were often celebrated. Epileptics were often shamans because people just assumed that God gave seizure-visions to the lucky ones. Gay people were seen as magical too. I mean, like in many cultures, men were viewed as warriors and women were viewed as caregivers. But gay people, being both male and female, were seen as both warriors and caregivers. Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss Army knives! My grandmother had no use for all the gay bashing and homophobia in the world, especially among other Indians. "Jeez," she said, Who cares if a man wants to marry another man? All I want to know is who's going to pick up all the dirty socks?" (155)”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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

“We're all travelling heavy with illusions.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“You read a book for the story, for each of its words," Gordy said, "and you draw your cartoons for the story, for each of the words and images. And, yeah, you need to take that seriously, but you should also read and draw because really good books and cartoons give you a boner."

I was shocked:

Did you just say books should give me a boner?"

Yes, I did."

Are you serious?"

Yeah... don't you get excited about books?"

I don't think that you're supposed to get THAT excited about books."

You should get a boner! You have to get a boner!" Gordy shouted. "Come on!"

We ran into the Reardan High School Library.

Look at all these books," he said.

There aren't that many," I said. It was a small library in a small high school in a small town.

There are three thousand four hundred and twelve books here," Gordy said. "I know that because I counted them."

Okay, now you're officially a freak," I said.

Yes, it's a small library. It's a tiny one. But if you read one of these books a day, it would still take you almost ten years to finish."

What's your point?"

The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know."

Wow. That was a huge idea.

Any town, even one as small as Reardan, was a place of mystery. And that meant Wellpinit, the smaller, Indian town, was also a place of mystery.

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."

Yes, yes, yes, yes," Gordy said. "Now doesn't that give you a boner?"

I am rock hard," I said.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.”
― Sherman Alexie

“As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life.

And now 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.”
― 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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“If it's fiction, then it better be true.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Books and beer are the best and worst defense.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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

“I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not." (176)”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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 Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“I'm a poet who can whine in meter”
― Sherman Alexie

“...there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them..."
~ Thomas Builds-the-Fire (played by Evan Adams)
in Alexie's "Smoke Signals”
― Sherman Alexie

“When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World

“Corliss wondered what happens to a book that sits unread on a library shelf for thirty years. Can a book rightfully be called a book if it never gets read?...

'How many books never get checked out," Corliss asked the librarian.

'Most of them,' she said.

Corliss never once considered the fate of library books. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier.

'Are you serious?' Corliss asked. 'What are we talking about here? If you were guessing, what is the percentage of books in this library that never get checked out?'

'We're talking sixty percent of them. Seriously. Maybe seventy percent. And I'm being optimistic. It's probably more like eighty or ninety percent. This isn't a library, it's an orphanage.'

The librarian talked in a reverential whisper. Corliss knew she'd misjudged this passionate woman. Maybe she dressed poorly, but she was probably great in bed, certainly believed in God and goodness, and kept an illicit collection of overdue library books on her shelves.”
― Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians

“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”
― Sherman Alexie

“They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.
I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them?
I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.
I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.
We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Coyote, who is the creator of all of us, was sitting on his cloud the day after he created Indians. Now, he liked the Indians, liked what they were doing. This is good, he kept saying to himself. But he was bored. He thought and thought about what he should make next in the world. But he couldn't think of anything so he decided to clip his toenails. ... He looked around and around his cloud for somewhere to throw away his clippings. But he couldn't find anywhere and he got mad. He started jumping up and down because he was so mad. Then he accidentally dropped his toenail clippings over the side of the cloud and they fell to the earth. They clippings burrowed into teh ground like seeds and grew up to be white man. Coyote, he looked down at his newest creation and said, "Oh, shit.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“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, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“You have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too. (191)”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.

And there are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because they live in an often-terrible world. They read because they believe despite the callow protestations of certain adults that books-especially the dark and dangerous ones-will save them.

”
― Sherman Alexie

“Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian