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Sherman Alexie Quotes | Quotes said by Sherman Alexie

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #1

    (I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. maybe more important than my family.) Can your best friend be more importamt than your family? (24)

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #2

    (So I heard the boom of my fathr's rifle when he shot my best friend.) A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.(14)

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #3

    ...And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you are. You're just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #4

    [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 Quote #5

    A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #6

    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 Quote #7

    And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #8

    And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either.
    We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly:

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #9

    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 Quote #10

    As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life.

    And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #11

    Because I want to be remembered.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #12

    But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #13

    But how can I get enough experience if they don't give me a chance to get experience?

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #14

    But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #15

    But people forget.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #16

    Can you hear the dreams crackling like a campfire? Can you hear the dreams sweeping through the pine trees and tipis? Can you hear the dreams laughing in the sawdust? Can you hear the dreams shaking just a little bit as the day grows long? Can you hear the dreams putting on a good jacket that smells of fry bread and sweet smoke? Can you hear the dreams stay up late and talk so many stories?

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #17

    Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love--it just happens!--but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left--the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #18

    Coach said. the quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #19

    Corliss wondered what happens to a book that sits unread on a library shelf for thirty years. Can a book rightfully be called a book if it never gets read?...

    'How many books never get checked out, Corliss asked the librarian.

    'Most of them,' she said.

    Corliss never once considered the fate of library books. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier.

    'Are you serious?' Corliss asked. 'What are we talking about here? If you were guessing, what is the percentage of books in this library that never get checked out?'

    'We're talking sixty percent of them. Seriously. Maybe seventy percent. And I'm being optimistic. It's probably more like eighty or ninety percent. This isn't a library, it's an orphanage.'

    The librarian talked in a reverential whisper. Corliss knew she'd misjudged this passionate woman. Maybe she dressed poorly, but she was probably great in bed, certainly believed in God and goodness, and kept an illicit collection of overdue library books on her shelves.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #20

    Coyote, who is the creator of all of us, was sitting on his cloud the day after he created Indians. Now, he liked the Indians, liked what they were doing. This is good, he kept saying to himself. But he was bored. He thought and thought about what he should make next in the world. But he couldn't think of anything so he decided to clip his toenails. ... He looked around and around his cloud for somewhere to throw away his clippings. But he couldn't find anywhere and he got mad. He started jumping up and down because he was so mad. Then he accidentally dropped his toenail clippings over the side of the cloud and they fell to the earth. They clippings burrowed into teh ground like seeds and grew up to be white man. Coyote, he looked down at his newest creation and said, Oh, shit.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #21

    Despite all of the time he spent in Big Heart's, Wilson had never come to understand the social lives of Indians. He did not know that, in the Indian world, there is not much social difference between a rich Indian and a poor one. Generally speaking, Indian is Indian. A few who gain wealth and power as lawyers, businessmen, artists, or doctors may marry white people and keep only white friends, but generally Indians of different classes interact freely with one another. Most unemployed or working poor, some with good jobs and steady incomes, but all mixing together. Wilson also did not realize how tribal distinctions were much more important than economic ones. The rich and poor Spokanes may hang out together, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Spokanes are friendly with the Lakota or Navajo or any other tribe. The Sioux still distrust the Crow because they served as scouts for Custer. Hardly anybody likes the Pawnee. Most important, though, Wilson did not understand that the white people who pretend to be Indian are gently teased, ignored, plainly ridiculed, or beaten, depending on their degree of whiteness.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #22

    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 Quote #23

    Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know 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.

    You can do it.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #24

    Everybody prayed; everybody lied about it. Even atheists prayed on airplanes and bingo nights.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #25

    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 Quote #26

    For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moments in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn't care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe's share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at anything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #27

    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!

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #28

    Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #29

    He felt split in two, one crazy man eating hair and one rational man watching a crazy man eat hair. He chewed and swallowed the last pieces of his father's life. He felt like he was building a museum of pain, a freak show, where he was the only visitor viewing the only mutant screaming the only prayer he knew: Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back Daddy...

  • Sherman Alexie Quote #30

    He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.

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