Sherman Alexie Quotes

“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.”

“Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.”

“I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

“When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.”

“That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.”

“Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.”

“That's right, I am a book kisser.”

“Books and beer are the best and worst defense.”

“I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.”

“What kind of life can you have in a house without books?”

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.

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.”

“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?”

“I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”

“The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.”

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.”

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

“I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.”

“Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”

“We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.”

“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)”

“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.”

“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.”

“Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.”

“I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.”

“Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.”

“She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks.”

“We're all travelling heavy with illusions.”

“If it's fiction, then it better be true.”

“I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children”

“You have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too.”

“Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.”

“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".”

“Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.”

“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?”

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

“When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.”

“Grief is when you feel so helpless and stupid that you think nothing will ever be right again, and your macaroni and cheese tastes like sawdust, and you can't even jerk off because it seems like too much trouble.”

“We only know how to lose and be lost.”

“Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”

“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.”

“You should approach each book -- you should approach life -- with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point.”

“I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.”

“We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to.”

“She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.”

“… 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…”

“Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.”

“He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous”

“At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.”

“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”

“I'm a poet who can whine in meter”

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

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

“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.”

“… 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.”

“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)”

“But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.”

“It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.”

“Is God a man or a woman?
God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.”

“It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.”

“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.”

“I think I was born with a suitcase.”

“The ordinary can be like medicine.”

“I drew because words were too unpredictable.”

“Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?”

“He hated to leave, but he loved his work. He was a man, and men needed to work. More sexism! More masculine tunnel vision! More need for gender-sensitivity workshops!”

“[Flying into Baltimore after 9/11] I didn't want to see some pacifist, vegan, whole-wheat, free-range, organic, progressive, gray-ponytail, communist, liberal, draft-dodging, NPR-listening wimp! What are they going to do if somebody tries to hijack the plane? Throw a Birkenstock at him? Offer him some pot?…I was hoping for about twenty-five NRA-loving, gun-nut, serial-killing, psychopathic, Ollie North, Norman Schwarzkopf, right-wing, Agent Orange, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, CIA, FBI, automatic-weapon, smart-bomb, laser-sighting bastards!”