Alexie Sherman Quotes & Sayings

I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children. — Sherman Alexie

Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.
Come see the freak named after his deceased father.
Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.
Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone. — Sherman Alexie

Hey, Mom, I'm a married woman now. I want to have ten babies and live here forever and ever.
How weird is that? It's almost ROMANTIC.
And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel.
Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her.
And a little scared. — Sherman Alexie

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

He likes to pretend he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life. — Sherman Alexie

Sometimes you don't have enough money to hire a real science teacher. Sometimes you have an old real science teacher who retires or quits and leaves you without a replacement. And if you don't have a real science teacher, then you pick one of the other teachers and make him the science teacher.
And that's why small-town kids sometimes don't know the truth about petrified wood. — 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

And I laughed because half of me was happy and half of me wasn't sure what else to do. — 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

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

My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport. — Sherman Alexie

Sharing dark skin doesn't necessarily make two men brothers — Sherman Alexie

When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner. — 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

[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

He made me realize that hard work
that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task
is joyous — Sherman Alexie

We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization. — 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

You have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too. (191) — Sherman Alexie

But she was beautiful, with hair and eyes so dark and long. He imagined she was a reservation eclipse. Full. He needed special glasses to look at her; he could barely survive her reflection. "You're a constellation," he said. — Sherman Alexie

Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house. — Sherman Alexie

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

I'm not an Indian warrior chief. I'm not some demure little Indian woman healer talking spider this, spider that, am I? I'm not babbling about the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I'm talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first century Indian, and you can't handle it, you wimp. — Sherman Alexie

I recognize that I'm probably the luckiest novelist in recent memory, because Sherman Alexie, a writer I greatly admire, raved about my book on 'The Colbert Report,' and then Mr. Colbert himself urged his viewers to buy it - on his show and on Twitter. — Edan Lepucki

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

The earth is our grandmother and that technology has become our mother and that they both hate each other. — Sherman Alexie

Sure, we thought the acres
That we tilled were sacred,
But how could we have known
That wheat can haunt like ghosts — Sherman Alexie

Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated. — Sherman Alexie

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

There is a good day to die and there is a good day to play the piano. — Sherman Alexie

He sang 'Stairway to Heaven' in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood. — Sherman Alexie

Here's a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. — 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

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

Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk. — Sherman Alexie

I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense. — Sherman Alexie

Fuck you,' Samuel said as he stole the ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed, rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax, close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk. — Sherman Alexie

You can do it."
"I can do it."
Do you understand 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. — Sherman Alexie

magical realism? Aren't we all making shit up, — Sherman Alexie

I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there. — Sherman Alexie

All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new. — Sherman Alexie

There's never enough time to change your life. You don't get to change your life, period. — 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

In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is. — Sherman Alexie

Thomas Builds-the-Fire's stories climbed into your clothes like sad, gave you itches that could not be scratched. If you repeated eve a sentence from one of those stories, your throat was never the same again. Those stories hung in your clothes and hair like smoke, and no amount of laundry soap or shampoo washed them out. Victor and Junior often tried to beat those stories out of Thomas, tied him down and taped his mouth shut. They pretended to be friendly and tried to sweet talk Thomas into temporary silences, made promises about beautiful Indian women and cases of Diet Pepsi. But none of that stopped Thomas, who talked and talked. — 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

It's like this white-Indian thing has gotten out of control. And the thing with the blacks and the Mexicans. Everybody blaming everybody ... I don't know what happened. I can't explain it all. Just look around at the world. Look at this country. Things just aren't like they used to be.'
'Son, things have never been like what you think they used to be. — Sherman Alexie

It's hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer. Still, Indians have a way of surviving. But it's almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It's the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn't take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins. — Sherman Alexie

All art is exploitation. — Sherman Alexie

A century ago she might have been beautiful, her face reflected in the river instead of a mirror. But all the years have changed more than the shape of our blood and eyes. We wear fear now like a turquoise choker, like a familiar shawl. — Sherman Alexie

My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror. — Sherman Alexie

He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody. — Sherman Alexie

She'd teach him nineteen different ways to spell matriarchy. — Sherman Alexie

They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents. — Sherman Alexie

You can't sustain [anger]. You become bitter. Nothing's going to change. Anger leads to resentment, then to spiking your orange juice, then to martyrdom. — 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

Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy. — Sherman Alexie

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

It's not like anybody's going to notice if you go away," he said. "So you might as well gut it out." Isn't — Sherman Alexie

Your mother is a better man than me. Mothers are almost always better men than men are. — Sherman Alexie

How many books do you have here?" Corliss asked. "Two million, one hundred thousand, and eleven," the librarian said proudly, but Corliss was frightened. What happens to the world when that many books go unread? And what happens to the unread authors of those unread books? — Sherman Alexie

Corliss had never once considered the fate of library books. She'd never wondered how many books go unread. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an inconsiderate lover, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier. — Sherman Alexie

Coyote: A small canid (Canis latrans) native to western North America that is closely related to the American wolf and whose cry has often been compared to that of Sippie Wallace and Janis Joplin, amongst others. — Sherman Alexie

Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap. — Sherman Alexie

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

I want to rasp into sober cryptology and say something dynamic, but tonight is my laundry night. — Sherman Alexie

We order Diet since my father and I are both diabetic. Genetics, you know? — Sherman Alexie

In other nightmares, in his everyday reality, Victor watched his father take a drink of vodka on a completely empty stomach. Victor could hear that near-poison fall, then hit, flesh and blood, nerve and vein. Maybe it was like lightning tearing an old tree into halves. Maybe it was like a wall of water, a reservation tsunami, crashing onto a small beach. Maybe it was like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Maybe it was like all that. Maybe. But after he drank, Victor's father would breathe in deep and close his eyes, stretch, and straighten his neck and back. During those long drinks, Victor's father wasn't shaped like a question mark. He looked more like an exclamation point. — Sherman Alexie

The ordinary can be like medicine. — Sherman Alexie

And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel.
Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her.
And a little scared. Well, a lot scared. — 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

When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn't get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven't read yet. That's how I view that I'm rich. I have hardcover books I may never read. — Sherman Alexie

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

When you resort to violence to prove a point, you've just experienced a profound failure of imagination. — Sherman Alexie

I've seen only painters and fishermen and I think they're both the same kind of men who made a different choice one time in their lives. The fisherman held a rod in his hand and said yes and the painter held a brush in his hand and said yes and sometimes I hold a beer in my hand and say yes. — Sherman Alexie

She went searching for her dreams, and she didn't find them, but she made the attempt. — Sherman Alexie

I hate my country. There are so many rich people who don't share their shit. They're like spoiled little ten-year-old bullies on the playground. They hog the monkey bars and the slide and the seesaw. And if you complain even a little bit, if you try to get just one spin on the merry-go-round, the bullies beat the shit out of you. — Sherman Alexie

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

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

all about reaction as opposed to action. — Sherman Alexie

I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not. — Sherman Alexie

What scares me least? The Afterlife. Really. Who cares? I'm going to be a good person no matter what is supposed to happen after I die. — Sherman Alexie

She shook my hand, loosely, like Indians do, using only her fingers. Not like those tight grips that white people use to prove something. She touched my hand like she was glad to see me, not like she wanted to break bones. — 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

Because I'm an American, I know there's all sorts of international folks who would gladly kidnap and behead me. — 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

Whites and Indians laughed at most of the same jokes, but they laughed for different reasons. — Sherman Alexie

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

If God were good, why would he create Rush Limbaugh? — Sherman Alexie

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

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

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket ... Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace. — Sherman Alexie

The white people always want to fight someone and they always get the dark-skinned people to do the fighting. — Sherman Alexie

But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic. — Sherman Alexie

My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance. — Sherman Alexie

Nothing as white as the white girl an Indian boy loves. — Sherman Alexie

He didn't do much of anything except ride that bike and listen to music. — Sherman Alexie