War Dances Quotes

“It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“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, War Dances

“Standing on the shore, I prayed for my dead. I praised them. I stupidly hoped that the lake would heal my small wounds. Then I stripped off my clothes and waded naked into the water.

Jesus, I don't want to die today or tomorrow, but I don't want to live forever.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“I was young and frightened and craved respect and its ugly cousin, approval, so I did as I was told.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Your mother is a better man than me. Mothers are almost always better men than men are.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Nothing ever really happens, you know. Life is infinitesimal and incremental and inconsequential.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“It really made me wish I was Roman or Greek, you know? A classical Greek god would have killed his lying, cheating father and then given him forgiveness. And a classical Greek god would have better abs, too. That's what Greek gods are all about, you know? Patricide and low body fat.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“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, War Dances

“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, War Dances: Stories and Poems

“Each of us - rich and poor, gay and straight, black and white - we are fragile and finite. We all go through this glorious life without guarantees, without promises of rescue or redemption. We have freedom of speech and religion, and the absolute freedom to leave behind our loved ones, or to force them to unhappily pursue us.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“My mother once made a quilt from dozens of pairs of second- and third- and fourth- hand blue jeans that she bought us at Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Value Village, and garage sales. My late sister studied my mother's denim quilt and said, 'That's a lot of pants. There's been a lot of ass in those pants. This is a blanket of asses.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“How does one survive these revelations? One just lives.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“After our earliest ancestors crawled out of the oceans, how soon did they feel the desire to crawl back in?”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“I think I'm engaged
To thirty-six women, my harem:
Platonic, bookish, and enraged.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“I am always amused by those couples- lovers and spouses- who perform and ask others to perform musical chairs whenever they, by random seat selection, are separated from each other. 'Can you switch seats with me?' A woman asked me. 'So I can sit with my husband?' She wanted me, a big man, who always books early, and will gratefully pay extra for the exit row, to trade my aisle seat for her middle seat. By asking me to change my location for hers, the woman is actually saying to me: 'Dear stranger, dear Sir, my comfort is more important than yours. Dear solitary traveler, my love and fear- as contained within my marriage- are larger than yours.' O, the insult! O, the condescension! And this is not an isolated incident. I've been asked to trade seats twenty or thirty times over the years. How dare you! How dare you ask me to change my life for you! How imperial! How colonial! But, ah, here is the strange truth: whenever I'm asked to trade seats for somebody else's love, I do, I always do.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“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, War Dances

“Aren't all crimes, by definition, hate crimes? I mean, people don't rob banks because they love tellers.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“We sat there in silence. A masculine silence. Thick and strong. Oh, I'm full of shit. We were terrified and clueless.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“I prayed to Our Father and I called my father. And one father remained silent and the other quickly came to get me.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“If God really loved Indians, he would have made us white people.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“I saw a man swerve his car and try to hit a stray dog, but the quick mutt dodged between two parked cars and made his escape. God, I thought, did I just see what I think I saw? At the next red light, I pulled up beside the man and stared hard at him. He knew that'd I seen his murder attempt, but he didn't care. He smiled and yelled loud enough for me to hear him through our closed windows: 'Don't give me that face unless you're going to do something about it. Come on, tough guy, what are you going to do?' I didn't do anything. I turned right on the green. He turned left against traffic. I don't know what happened to that man or the dog, but I drove home and wrote this poem. Why do poets think they can change the world? The only life I can save is my own.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“In the end, I think I wasn’t defending anything at all. I’m an editor—an artist—and I like to make connections; I am paid to make connections. And so I wonder. Did I walk down those stairs because I was curious? Because a question had been asked (Who owned the feet that landed on my basement floor?) and I, the editor, wanted to discover the answer?”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances: Stories and Poems

“one ponders. And when one ponders, one creates theories—hypotheses, to explain the world.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances: Stories and Poems

“Wouldn't the crow, that ubiquitous trickster, make a more compelling and accurate national symbol for the United States than the bald eagle?”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Why do poets think
They can change the world?
The only life I can save
Is my own.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Dozens of species of insects give virgin birth. Crayfish give virgin birth. Some honeybees give virgin birth. And Komodo dragons - yeah, those big lizards give virgin birth, too. Jeez, one human gives virgin birth and that jump-starts one of the world's greatest religions. But when a Komodo dragon gives virgin birth, do you know what it's thinking? It's thinking, 'This is Tuesday, right? I think this is Tuesday. What am I going to do on Wednesday?”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“A poet once wrote "Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies." Can you tell us, in twenty-five words or less, exactly how much we all hate mathematical blackmail?”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“We buried my father in the tiny Catholic cemetery on our reservation. Since I am named after him, I had to stare at a tombstone with my name on it.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“When I was nine, my father sliced his knee with a chainsaw.
But he let himself bleed and finished cutting down one more tree before his boss drove him to EMERGENCY.
Late that night, stoned on morphine and beer, my father needed my help to steer his pickup into the woods.
“Watch for deer,” My father said. “Those things just appear like magic.”
It was an Indian summer and we drove through warm rain and thunder, until we found that chainsaw, lying under the fallen pine.
Then I watched, with wonder, as my father, shotgun-rich and impulse-poor, blasted that chainsaw dead.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“Son,” my father said. “Here’s the score. Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances