You Don't Have to Say You Love Me Quotes

“Listen. I don't know how or when

My grieving will end, but I'm always
Relearning how to be human again.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“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, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Is the air okay?" I texted.

"It hurts a little to breathe," my sister texted back. "But we're okay."

Jesus, I thought, is there a better and more succinct definition of grief than It hurts a little to breathe, but we're okay?”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“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, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“The world is too fucking big. Sometimes, I can't even carry myself through all the love and fear.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“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, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“If Heaven ain't filled with gender-swapping Indians," I said, "then I don't want to go there.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“So we must forgive all those Who trespass against us? Fuck that shit. I’m not some charitable trust. There are people I will hate Even after I’m ashes and dust.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“So I wonder: Will a person who has drowned,
Or almost drowned, always feel
Like they're drowning,
Even after they've been saved?”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“In 2016, white conservatives elected as president a serial liar who is likely the most fearful and paranoid and wildly insecure white man who has ever run for office.
And those white folks elected him because they believe they are victims. Yes, I am a Spokane Indian-an indigenous American-who grew up with white folks who think this country is being stolen from them.
Hahahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahaha.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“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, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Self-Exam

Dear audience, please stand if you were raised
By a terrible mother. Okay, okay,

Approximately half of you. So I'd say
That terrible mothers are commonplace.

Just like terrible fathers. So let's mourn
For the children who never knew childhood.

Our grief is justified. Our anger is good.
I won't blame children for childish scorn.

But there comes a day when a broken child
Becomes an adult. On that day, you'll need

To choose between the domestic and wild.
You'll need to escalate war or declare peace.

I tell you this because I'm the kid, mother-stung,
Who became a terrible adult son.

And I'm to blame for that. I made that mess.
Because I am the Amateur of Forgiveness.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I would guess, perhaps too optimistically, that nearly ever racist believes it is morally wrong to be racist. And since nearly every person thinks of themselves as being moral, then a racist must consciously and subconsciously employ tortured logic in order to explain away their racism--in order to believe themselves to be nonracist.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I TEND TO believe in government because it was the U.S. government that paid for my brain surgery when I was five months old and provided USDA food so I wouldn’t starve during my poverty-crushed reservation childhood and built the HUD house that kept us warm and gave me scholarship money for the college education that freed me. Of course, the government only gave me all of that good shit because they completely fucked over my great-grandparents and grandparents but, you know, at least some official white folks keep some of their promises.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I cannot defeat cancer. Nobody defeats cancer. There is no winning or losing. There is no surviving or not surviving.

There are only coin flips: heads or tails; benign or malignant; weight loss or bloating; morphine or oxycodone; extreme rescue efforts or Do Not Resuscitate; live or die.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“An Indian’s wealth   Is determined by what they lose And not by what they save.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Thing is, I don’t believe in ghosts. But I see them all the time.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I could write “I don’t know” one million times and publish that as my memoir. And, yes, it would be repetitive, experimental, and more metaphor than history, but it would also be emotionally accurate.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“You’re always making up stuff from the past,” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I realized that my mother had not taught us the tribal language because she knew her children would not be strong enough to carry the responsibility of being the last fluent speakers. She protected us from that spiritual burden. She protected us from that loneliness.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“We all laughed and laughed
Because, yes, my mother was
Exactly the kind of mortal
Who challenged the Gods.

She was the reservation Medea.
She was the indigenous Antigone.
But just imagine how it felt to be
Her fragile child. I never stopped

Being afraid of her. I never left
That dark porch. I am still
Sleeping with those dogs.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“After neurosurgery, I have learned that my brain is a boardinghouse where my waking consciousness rents one room with a hot plate and a black-and-white TV while the rest of the rooms are occupied by a random assortment of banshees, ghosts, mimes wearing eagle feathers, and approximately twelve thousand strangers who look exactly like me.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I don't know if I ever told you, my therapist said. But I'm a birder. I love birds. and when they hit a window like that, or get hurt in any significant way, they have this ritual. They shake off the pain. They shake off the trauma. And they walk in circles to reconnect their brain and body and soul. When your bird was walking and shaking, it was remembering and relearning how to be a bird. Oh, wow. I couldn't say much after that intense revelation, but my therapist continued. We humans often lose touch with our bodies, she said. We forget that we can also shake away our pain and trauma.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Scholars talk about the endless cycle of poverty and racism and classism and crime. But I don't see it as a cycle, as a circle. I see it as a locked room filled with the people who share my DNA. This room has recently been set afire and there's only one escape hatch, ten feet off the ground. And I know I have to build a ladder out of the bones of my fallen family in order to climb to safety.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“And the tombstone will never answer. Because the dead have only the voices we give to them.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I often wonder why I am the one who remember all the pain?”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“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, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“When people consider the meaning of genocide, they might only think of corpses being pushed into mass graves.
But a person can be genocided - can have every connection to his past severed - and live to be an old man whose ribcage is a haunted house around his heart.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I don’t recall the moment when I officially became a storyteller—a talented liar—but here I must quote Simon Ortiz, the Acoma Pueblo writer, who said, “Listen. If it’s fiction, then it better be true.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me