The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

“There’s always time to change your life.” I almost gagged when I said that. I didn’t even believe that. There’s never enough time to change your life. You don’t get to change your life, period.

“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?”

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.

“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.”

He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could.