Sherman Alexie Quotes

For the rest of our lives, all we can hear are our names chanted over and over, until we are deaf to everything else. ~ Sherman Alexie

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming. ~ Sherman Alexie

Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn't pay well at all. ~ Sherman Alexie

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

In a real-world way, my gifts are very limited in terms of what I can do. ~ 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

Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is nicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot.
This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.
Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much. ~ Sherman Alexie

Utensil

While feasting
On venison stew
After we buried my mother,
I recognized my spoon

And realized my family
Had been using it
For at least forty-two years.
How does one commemorate

The ordinary? I thanked
The spoon for being a spoon
And finished my stew.
How does one get through

A difficult time? How does
A son properly mourn his mother?
It helps to run the errands--
To get shit done. I washed

That spoon, dried it,
And put it back
In the drawer,
But I did it consciously,

Paying attention
To my hands, my wrists,
And the feel of steel
Against my fingertips.

Then my wife drove us back
Home to Seattle, where I wrote
This poem about ordinary
Grief. Thank you, poem,

For being a poem. Thank you,
Paper and ink, for being paper
And ink. Thank you, desk,
For being a desk. Thank you,

Mother, for being my mother.
Thank you for your imperfect love.
It almost worked. It mostly worked.
Or partly worked. It was almost enough. ~ Sherman Alexie

No, " Miss Warren said. "Your sister, she's dead ~ 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

Let's get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I'm pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have
officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I'm also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona
have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now. ~ Sherman Alexie

My sister is running away to get lost, but I am running away because I want to find something. And my parents love me so much that they want to help me. Yeah, Dad is a drunk and Mom is an ex-drunk, but they don't want their kids to be drunks. ~ Sherman Alexie

cry huge, gasping tears. ~ 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

I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5) ~ Sherman Alexie

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

Well, he's scoring in that video." "That guy wasn't guarding him. Obama is POTUS. He is mother-effing POTUS. And even if he wasn't POTUS, Obama still had that ball hanging out so far that anybody could have blocked it. You could have blocked it, Ed. That shit was as weak as the public option in health care. If Obama pulled that on me, I'd block it like some racist-ass redneck senator from Alabama. ~ Sherman Alexie

The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not." I ~ Sherman Alexie

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

These are things you should learn. Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you; your future is 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. Now, these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices. And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they're not necessarily evil, unless you let them be. ~ 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

I ain't interested in the truth. I'm interested in the way things should be. ~ 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

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

How can we imagine a new language when the language of the enemy keeps our dismembered tongues tied to his belt? ~ Sherman Alexie

Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it. ~ Sherman Alexie

Shoving hot bread up a roasting bird's ass & feasting on it seems like an apt celebration of colonialism. ~ Sherman Alexie

All I owe the world is my art ~ Sherman Alexie

Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it's even more true today, even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean, a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bullshit, right? ~ Sherman Alexie

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

The contemporary motto for the mullet-wearer is "business in front, party in the back" but the Indian mullet warrior motto was "I don't want my hair to get in my eyes as I'm kicking your ass. ~ Sherman Alexie

all about reaction as opposed to action. ~ 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

I wasn't afraid of the dark nearly as much as I was afraid of the monsters who hunted by night and day. ~ Sherman Alexie

Late at night I go out and listen to the wind. That's all the wisdom I need. I mean, I love books, but shoot, most of the world's wisdom is not contained in books. ~ Sherman Alexie

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

I am surrounded by people who trust me to be a respectful stranger. Am I trustworthy? Are any of us trustworthy? I hope so. ~ Sherman Alexie

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

Hell, sometimes it feels like the whole country is on fire. Like a constant conflagration is burning too close to all poor people. Shouldn't rich-ass America be taking care of everybody? ~ Sherman Alexie

...there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them..."
~ Thomas Builds-the-Fire (played by Evan Adams)
in Alexie's "Smoke Signals ~ Sherman Alexie

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

She was so white his reservation eyes suffered. ~ Sherman Alexie

Things had gotten so intense, so painful, that my body just checked out. Yep, my mind and soul and heart had a quick meeting and voted to shut down for a few repairs. ~ Sherman Alexie

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet. ~ 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

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

But, in the Trump aftermath, I've measured the costs

And benefits of loving those who don't love
Strangers. After all, I'm often the odd one -

The strangest stranger - in any field or room.
"He was weird" will be carved into my tomb. ~ Sherman Alexie

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, '
the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? '

and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane,

the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, '
I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born

and before his grandparents' grandparents were born.
I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too,
because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.'
But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to b ~ Sherman Alexie

one ponders. And when one ponders, one creates theories - hypotheses, to explain the world. ~ 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

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

He could see his uncles slugging each other with such force that they had to be in love. Strangers would never want to hurt each other that badly. ~ Sherman Alexie

They've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg [printing] press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read. ~ Sherman Alexie

He doesn't hurt you because you're the only good thing in his life. He doesn't want to give that up. It's the only thing he hasn't given up. ~ Sherman Alexie

The Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club I was born with water on the brain. Okay, so that's not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors' fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded. My brain was drowning in grease. But ~ Sherman Alexie

And none of these people, not one of them, had loved any of the others well enough. Failures, he thought, we're all failures ... He wanted his love to be the wine and bread, and the blood and flesh. He reached for her, a dangerous stranger in a city of dangerous strangers, but she turned away from him and walked unsteadily through the crowd. How many loveless people walk among the barely loved? ~ Sherman Alexie

Here's the score. Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more. ~ Sherman Alexie

That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people. ~ Sherman Alexie

It made me cry for myself. ~ Sherman Alexie

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

Summer coming like a car from down the highway. ~ Sherman Alexie

Ya=hey, he called out to the movement of air, the unseen. A summer before, Uncle Moses listened to his nephew John-John talking a story. John-John was back from college and told Moses that 99 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to the human eye. Ever since, Moses made sure to greet what he could not see. ~ 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

What kind of life can you have in a house without books? ~ Sherman Alexie

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

My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people. ~ Sherman Alexie

How often had men sat around dinner tables and discussed women's lives, their choices, and the reasons why one woman reached across the bed to touch another woman? ~ Sherman Alexie

I pretended I belonged. ~ Sherman Alexie

Taste failure in the tap water, ~ Sherman Alexie

my nose bled like a firework ~ Sherman Alexie

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

It was July. Crazy hot and dry. It hadn't rained in, like, sixty days. Drought hot. Scorpion hot. Vultures flying circles in the sky hot. ~ Sherman Alexie

That's right, I am a book kisser. ~ Sherman Alexie

I remember when people used to think I was smart.
I remember when people used to think my brain was useful.
Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical. ~ Sherman Alexie

I'm a freak with power. ~ Sherman Alexie

My father is an amazing man. ~ Sherman Alexie

He was my best friend and I needed him. ~ Sherman Alexie

If you can catch crazy, I'm a walking epidemic. ~ Sherman Alexie

You have to treat your car with love. And I don't mean love of an object. You see, that's just wrong. That's materialism. You have to love your car like it's sentient being, like it can love you back. Now, that's some deep-down agape love. ~ Sherman Alexie

He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. ~ Sherman Alexie

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

Yep, my daddy was an undependable drunk. But he'd never missed any of my organized games, concerts, plays, or picnics. He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could. (189) ~ 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

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

There's always time to change your life. ~ 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

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment. ~ 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

And it's not the good stuff that I recall. No. It's the most traumatic shit that plays in the 3D IMAX Theater of My Mind. ~ Sherman Alexie

(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

Spiritual matters should be private. ~ Sherman Alexie

....Dear friends, I am often a lonely man,

Even in a room full of people who love me. Dear friends, my brain--
Unpredictable as it was--is even more unpredictable now.
But thank God for all of the ways in which we compensate.
For our deficiencies. ~ 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

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

Because someone needs to help you die the right way," she said. "And we both know that dying ain't something you ever done before. ~ Sherman Alexie

He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could. ~ Sherman Alexie

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.
Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.
We lived and died together.
All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.
And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.
And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses. ~ Sherman Alexie

You must be a rich man," she said. "Not much of a warrior, though. You keep letting me sneak up on you."
You don't surprise me," he said. "The Plains Indians had women who rode their horses eighteen hours a day. They could shoot seven arrows consecutively, have them all in the air at the same time. They were the best light cavalry in the world."
Just my luck," she said. "An educated Indian."
Yeah," he said. "Reservation University."
They both laughed at the old joke. Every Indian is an alumnus.
Where you from?" she asked.
Wellpinit," he said. "I'm a Spokane."
I should've known. You got those fisherman's hands."
Ain't no salmon left in our river. Just a school bus and a few hundred basketballs."
What the hell you talking about?"
Our basketball team drives into the river and drowns every year," he said. "It's a tradition."
She laughed. "You're just a storyteller, ain't you?"
I'm just telling you things before they happen," he said. "The same things sons and daughters will tell your mothers and fathers."
Do you ever answer a question straight?"
Depends on the question," he said.
Do you want to be my powwow paradise? ~ Sherman Alexie

Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I am a blank sky, a human solar eclipse. ~ Sherman Alexie