"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'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)

"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)

"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)

"I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant."
— Sherman Alexie

"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)

"She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks. "
— Sherman Alexie (Ten Little Indians)

"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)

"Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained."
— 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

"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: Stories and Poems)

"We're all travelling heavy with illusions."
— Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

"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)

"That's right, I am a book kisser."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye."
— 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

"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)

"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)

"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)

""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'm a poet who can whine in meter"
— Sherman Alexie

"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)

"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 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)

"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)

""...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

"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)

"Books and beer are the best and worst defense."
— Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

"If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time."
— 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

"Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works."
— 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

"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)

""You must be a rich man," she said. "Not much of a warrior, though. You keep letting me sneak up on you."
"You don't surprise me," he said. "The Plains Indians had women who rode their horses eighteen hours a day. They could shoot seven arrows consecutively, have them all in the air at the same time. They were the best light cavalry in the world."
"Just my luck," she said. "An educated Indian."
"Yeah," he said. "Reservation University."
They both laughed at the old joke. Every Indian is an alumnus.
"Where you from?" she asked.
"Wellpinit," he said. "I'm a Spokane."
"I should've known. You got those fisherman's hands."
"Ain't no salmon left in our river. Just a school bus and a few hundred basketballs."
"What the hell you talking about?"
"Our basketball team drives into the river and drowns every year," he said. "It's a tradition."
She laughed. "You're just a storyteller, ain't you?"
"I'm just telling you things before they happen," he said. "The same things sons and daughters will tell your mothers and fathers."
"Do you ever answer a question straight?"
"Depends on the question," he said.
"Do you want to be my powwow paradise?""
— Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

"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)

"But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan.

Overnight I became a good player.

I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good.

I wanted to live up to the expectations.

I guess that's what it comes down to.

The power of expectations.

And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"And I realized that sure Indians were drunk and sad and displaced and crazy and mean but dang we knew how to laugh.

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 good-bye 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)

"Summer coming like a car from down the highway."
— Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

"The ordinary can be like medicine."
— Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

"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."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice.
I'm traveling heavy with illusions."
— Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

"We only know how to lose and be lost."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"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)

"When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? 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)

"'Well, the thing is, I don't think Indians are nomadic anymore. Most indians anyway.'

'No, we're not,' I said

'I'm not nomadic,' Rowdy said. 'Hardly anybody on this rez is nomadic. Except for you. You're the nomadic one.'

'Whatever.'

'No. I'm serious. I always knew you were going to leave. I always knew you were going to leave us behind and travel the world. I had this dream about you a few months ago. You were standing on the Great Wall of China. You looked happy. And I was happy for you.'

Rowdy didn't cry. But I did.

'You're an old-time nomad,' Rowdy said. 'You're going to keep moving all over the world in search of food and water and grazing land. That's pretty cool.'

I could barely talk.

'Thank you,' I said.

'Yeah,' Rowdy said. 'Just make sure you send me postcards, you asshole.'

'From everywhere,' I said.

I would always love Rowdy. And I would always miss him, too. Just as I would always love and miss my grandmother, my big sister, and Eugene.

Just as I would always love and miss my reservation and my tribe.

I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them.

I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"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 (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)