Sherman Alexie Quotations | Page 2

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.

I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They're attracted to more than surface.

If I were a doctor nobody would be inviting me to talk to reservations. I'd be a different person. Writers can influence more people.

I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's not a book culture. That's why I'm trying to make movies. Indians go to movies; Indians own video recorders.

Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian.

...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.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.

I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.

All art is exploitation.

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.

I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.

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.

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

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

[F]rank knew he was guilty of arrogance and misanthropy, but he compensated by being kind to strangers and tipping really well at restaurants.

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.

One play can change your momentum forever.

What's the difference between bulimics and anorexics?" I ask. "Anorexics are anorexics all the time," she says, "I'm only bulimic when I'm throwing up." Wow. She sounds just like my dad! "I'm only an alcoholic when I get drunk." There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. Penelope gorges on her pain and then throws it up and flushes it away. My dad drinks his pain away. (107)

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

and then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two depending on your definition of what I did to Custer . . .

That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.

I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)

Summer coming like a car from down the highway.

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

He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.

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

I'm a poet who can whine in meter

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

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

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:

it's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of words

...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

Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.

We only know how to lose and be lost.

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

The librarian spoke 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.

There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.

Non-Indian writers usually say "Great Spirit," "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four-Legged, and Winged." Mixed-blood writers usually say "Creator, "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four- Legged, and Winged." Indian writers usually say "God," "Mother Earth," "Human Being, Dog, and Bird."

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.

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?

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

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it.

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.

I think I was born with a suitcase.

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)

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)

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito...

...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.

Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.

But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan. Overnight I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to the expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew.

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

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

The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.

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)

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

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

Those Montana Indians were so tough that white people were scared of them. Can you imagine a place where white people are scared of Indians and not the other way around? That's Montana.

That's right, I am a book kisser.

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.

Sometimes it's called passing out and sometimes it's just pretending to be asleep

Like officer Dave.He's never said much about his life, but I can tell he's scarred. And he knows I'm scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. (217)

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

Writing is a lonely business.

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

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.

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.

Spiritual matters should be private.

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.

My father is an amazing man.

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

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal.

Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?

I'm quite aware of my differences. I wouldn't classify them as weird

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

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

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.

Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.

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.

We are taught to take the bread into our bodies as proof of Jesus's body.

Let us now celebrate the literary allusion.

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

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

My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac.

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.

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