Sherman Alexie Quotes & Sayings

Yep, I have to admit that isosceles triangles make me feel hormonal. — Sherman Alexie

My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room. — Sherman Alexie

They called me an Indian pig. Oh, and they called me a prairie n*****. Pretty colorful, enit?"

"I suppose."

"That one pissed me off, though. I ain't no prairie Indian. I'm from a salmon tribe, man. If they were going to insult me, they should've called me salmon n*****."

"I'm surprised you can laugh about this."

"It's what Indians do."

"Weren't you afraid?"

"Yeah, I was afraid, but I'm afraid most of the time, you know? How would you feel if a white guy like you got dropped into the middle of a black neighborhood, like Compton, California, on a Saturday night?"

"I'd be very afraid."

"And that's exactly how I feel living in Seattle. Hell, I feel that way living in the United States. Indians are outnumbered, Officer. Those three guys scared me bad, but I've been scared for a long time. — Sherman Alexie

You should approach each book
you should approach life
with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point. — Sherman Alexie

The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more. — Sherman Alexie

I can take a single hair from the braids of an Indian woman and make it sound like a promise come true. Like a thousand promises come true. — Sherman Alexie

What if someone picks on me?" I asked
Then I'll pick on them".
What if someone picks my nose?" I asked.
The I'll pick your nose, too" Rowdy said. — Sherman Alexie

You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop. — Sherman Alexie

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

I know a lot about being white - because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day. — Sherman Alexie

[Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST!
And that thought just cracked me up.]
It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the beach where they could protest against the slaughter of baby seals. — Sherman Alexie

There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap. — Sherman Alexie

Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection,
What happens to the soul that hates its reflection? — Sherman Alexie

In order to know somebody through their words, I mean, it has to be an, it has to be a letter, you know? It has to be a long e-mail. It has to be a five-page hand-written letter, you know, it has to be overwhelming and messy and sloppy as humans are. — Sherman Alexie

Well of course man. We Indians have lost everything. We lost our native land, we lost our languages, we lost our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost. — Sherman Alexie

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

But I know somebody must be thinking about us because if they weren't we'd just disappear just like those Indians who used to climb the pueblos. Those Indians disappeared with food still cooking in the pot and air waiting to be breathed and they turned into birds or dust or the blue of the sky or the yellow of the sun.
There they were and suddenly they were forgotten for just a second and for just a second nobody thought about them and then they were gone. — Sherman Alexie

No, " Miss Warren said. "Your sister, she's dead — Sherman Alexie

Junior based all of his decisions on his dreams and visions, which created a lot of problems. — Sherman Alexie

I didn't literally kill Indians. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture. — Sherman Alexie

Well, as a native, as a colonized people you do live in the in between. The thing is I'm native. But necessarily because I'm a member of the country, I'm also a White American. — Sherman Alexie

Junior talks about it - relating to dozens if not hundreds of tribes. Even as the world tries to define you, narrow the definition of you, don't do it to yourself. True — Sherman Alexie

Walked back into the house to feed myself and my illusions. — Sherman Alexie

On a reservation, Indian men who abandon their children are treated worse than white fathers who do the same thing. It's because white men have been doing that forever and Indian men have just learned how. That's how assimilation can work. — Sherman Alexie

One play can change your momentum forever. — Sherman Alexie

I wasn't just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo. — Sherman Alexie

Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies. — Sherman Alexie

Funny how a little politeness can change people's minds. — Sherman Alexie

I know that death is never added to death; it multiplies. — Sherman Alexie

The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same. — Sherman Alexie

I got in a fight with my girlfriend," I said. "I was just driving around, blowing off steam, you know?"
Well, you should be more careful where you drive," the officer said. "You're making people nervous. You don't fit the profile of the neighborhood."
I wanted to tell him that I didn't fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me into trouble. — Sherman Alexie

Jeez, how stupid was I? What kind of job can a reservation Indian boy get? I was too young to deal blackjack at the casino, there were only about fifteen green grass lawns on the reservation (and none of their owners outsourced the mowing jobs), and the only paper route was owned by a tribal elder named Wally. And he had to deliver only fifty papers, so his job was more like a hobby. — Sherman Alexie

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

If it's fiction, then it better be true. — Sherman Alexie

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

He'd promise to see an organic nutritionist, aromatherapist, deep-tissue masseuse, feng shui consultant, yoga master, and Mormon stand-up comedian if those promises would help him get off this mountain. — Sherman Alexie

But God has a way of making things even out, I guess. — Sherman Alexie

At least half the country thinks the mascot issue is insignificant. But I think it's indicative of the ways in which Indians have no cultural power. We're still placed in the past. So we're either in the past or we're only viewed through casinos. I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian. — Sherman Alexie

If I stand at this window long enough
I will see the long thread of history
float randomly through the breeze.
This is all I know about peace. — Sherman Alexie

How self-centered, how arrogant ... Imagine the awesome privilege of living in a society where you get to choose what you eat at each and every meal. When I was a kid, I was a vegetarian and a vegan for long stretches ... I was a commodity cheese-atarian. — 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

Good art is not universal. Bruce Willis is universal. — Sherman Alexie

Thomas Builds-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story:
"I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign. I knew I had to go there but I didn't have a car. Didn't have a license. I was only thirteen. So I walked all the way, took me all day, and I finally made it to the falls. I stood there for an hour waiting. Then your dad came walking up. 'What the hell are you doing here? He asked me. I said, 'waiting for a vision.' Then your father said, 'All you're going to get here is mugged.' So he drove me to Denny's, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation. For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me. But they didn't. Your dad was my vision. 'Take care of each other' is what my dreams were saying. 'Take care of each other. — Sherman Alexie

The morning of the game, I'd woken up in my rez house so my dad could drive me the twenty-two miles to Reardan, so I could get on the team bus for the ride back to the reservation.
Crazy. — Sherman Alexie

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature. — Sherman Alexie

So I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me. — Sherman Alexie

Hey," Victor said. "Tell me a story."
Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: "There were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to be warriors in the old way. All the horses were gone. So the two Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city. They parked the stolen car in front of the police station and then hitchhiked back home to the reservation. When they got back, all their friends cheered and their parents' eyes shone with pride. You were very brave, everybody said to the two Indian boys. Very brave."
"Ya-hey," Victor said. "That's a good one. I wish I could be a warrior. — Sherman Alexie

In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.' — Sherman Alexie

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

Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they're idiots. Especially if they're idiots. You can't just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they're crazy. — Sherman Alexie

Gordy," I said. "I need to talk to you."
"I don't have time," he said. "Mr. Orcutt and I have to debug some PCs. Don't you hate PCs? They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague."
Wow, and people thought I was a freak.
"I much prefer Macs, don't you?" he asked. "They're so poetic. — Sherman Alexie

Indians have no monopoly on environmentalism. That's one of the great myths. But we were subsistence livers. They're two different things. Environmentalism is a conscious choice and subsistence is the absence of choice. We had to use everything to survive. And now that we've been assimilated and colonized and we have luxuries and excesses, we're just as wasteful as other people. — Sherman Alexie

Instead, I woke early the next morning, before sunrise, and went out into the world. I walked past my car. I stepped onto the pavement, still warm from the previous day's sun. I started walking. In bare feet, I traveled upriver toward the place where I was born and will someday die. At that moment, if you had broken open my heart you could have looked inside and seen the thin white skeletons of one thousand salmon. — Sherman Alexie

Ialways think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during the first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians.
So I'm never quite sure why we eat Turkey like everybody else. (101) — Sherman Alexie

Late one day James and I watch the sun fly across the sky like a basketball on fire until it falls down completely and lands in Benjamin Lake with a splash and shakes the ground and even wakes up Lester FallsApart who thought it was his father come back to slap his face again. — Sherman Alexie

If you weren't good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own. — Sherman Alexie

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

That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty. — Sherman Alexie

And finally this, when the sun was falling down so beautiful we didn't have time to give it a name, she held the child born of white mother and red father and said,' Both sides of this baby are beautiful'. — Sherman Alexie

If you kill a black man, the world is silent. You can hear a garage door opening from twenty blocks away. You can pick up a pay phone and only hear the dial tone. Shooting stars sound exactly like the soft laughter of a little girl in Gasworks Park. If you kill a white man, the world erupts with noise: fireworks, sirens, a gavel pounding a desk, the slamming of doors. — Sherman Alexie

They didn't beat me up too bad. I could tell they didn't want to put me in the hospital or anything. Mostly they just wanted to remind me that I was a traitor. And they wanted to steal my candy and the money. It wasn't much. Maybe ten bucks in coins and dollar bills. But that money, and the idea of giving it to poor people, had made me feel pretty good about myself. I was a poor kid raising money for other poor people. It made me feel almost honorable. But I just felt stupid and naive after those guys took off. — Sherman Alexie

If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything. — Sherman Alexie

Listen. I don't know how or when

My grieving will end, but I'm always
Relearning how to be human again. — Sherman Alexie

They call me an apple because they think I'm red on the outside and white on the inside. — Sherman Alexie

I learned how to stop crying.
I learned how to hide inside of myself.
I learned how to be somebody else.
I learned how to be cold and numb. — Sherman Alexie

We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to. — Sherman Alexie

In this world, we must love the liars or go unloved — Sherman Alexie

James tells the crowd that the river is just a few yards from where we stand is all we ever need to believe in. One white woman asks how old James is and I tell her he's seven and she tells me that he's so smart for an Indian boy.
James hears this and tells the white woman that she's pretty smart for an old white woman. — Sherman Alexie

It's just me and James walking and walking except he's on my back and his eyes are looking past the people who are looking past us for the coyote of our soul and the wolverine of our heart and the crazy crazy man that touches every Indian who spends too much time alone. — Sherman Alexie

I am a zero on the rez. And if you subtract zero from zero, you still have zero. So what's the point of subtracting when the answer is always the same? — Sherman Alexie

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays. — Sherman Alexie

My mullet was an insecurity shield. My mullet was an ethnic hatchet. My mullet was an arrow on fire.
My mullet said to the literary world, Hello, you privileged prep-school assholes, I'm here to steal your thunder, lightning, and book sales. — Sherman Alexie

All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them. — Sherman Alexie

Don't live up to your stereotypes. — Sherman Alexie

There's always time to change your life. — Sherman Alexie

Did she say anything before she died?" he asked.
"Yes," the surgeon said. "She said, 'Forgive him'"
"Forgive him?" my father asked.
"I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her."
Wow.
My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love and tolerance.
She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her.
I think My Dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death.
I think my mother would have helped him.
I think I would have helped him, too.
But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.
Even dead, she was a better person than us. — Sherman Alexie

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

She thought she could be saved. She thought he could take her hand and owldance her around the circle. She thought she could watch him fancydance, watch his calf muscles grow more and more perfect with each step. She thought he was Crazy Horse. — Sherman Alexie

There were all sorts of myths and legends surrounding the lake. I mean, we're Indians, and we like to make up shit about lakes, you know? — Sherman Alexie

Am I defined by what I've seen, or do I define the world by what I've witnessed? O, what beautiful or terrible thing waits around the next corner? Who isn't in love with this mystery? — Sherman Alexie

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

Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter and I have fun. But I don't think anybody learns anything about me as a person. — Sherman Alexie

Sometimes, she wondered what she was missing, if her life was somehow incomplete because she didn't see the reflection of her face in the face of a son or daughter. Maybe. That's what mothers told her: Oh, you don't know what you're missing; it's spiritual; I feel closer to the earth, to the creator of all things. Perhaps all of that was true
it must be true
but Grace also knew that mothering was work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. She'd known too many women who'd vanished after childbirth; women whose hopes and fears had been pushed to the back of the family closet; women who'd magically been replaced by their children and their children's desires. — Sherman Alexie

I felt brave all of a sudden. Yeah, maybe it was just a stupid and immature school yard fight. Or maybe it was the most important moment of my life. Maybe I was telling the world that I was no longer a human target. — Sherman Alexie

Had she been hanging on to her dream of being a writer, but only barely hanging on, and something made her let go? — Sherman Alexie

I keep writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and reediting. It became my grieving ceremony. — Sherman Alexie

In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly. — Sherman Alexie

I pretended I belonged. — Sherman Alexie

I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage. — Sherman Alexie

More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years. — Sherman Alexie

Survival = Anger x Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation. — Sherman Alexie

But I'm also addicted to books. And I know there has never been a human being or a television show, no matter how great, that could measure up to a great book. — 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

Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write. — Sherman Alexie

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

I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants. — Sherman Alexie

Rowdy and I played one-on-one for hours. we played until dark. we played until the streetlights lit up court. we played until the bats swooped down at our heads. we played until the moon was huge and golden and perfect in the dark sky.
we didn't keep score. — Sherman Alexie

Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle? — Sherman Alexie

Yes, I have often battled Grief. / Both of us used our teeth. — Sherman Alexie

My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage. — Sherman Alexie