Sherman Alexie Quotes

I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders.

I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me.

I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.

Unlike landed white men, she didn't need to climb mountains to experience mystic panic. All she needed was to set her alarm dock for the next morning, wake when it rang, and go to class.

I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.

The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.

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)

White Americans have a short memory.

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

Poetry = Anger x Imagination

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.

My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.

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

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

Religious fundamentalists are unaware that freedom of religion necessarily brings with it the freedom to mock religion.

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)

A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.

Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter and I have fun. But I don't think anybody learns anything about me as a person.

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 feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.

I know a lot about being white - because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day.

she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep roots buried in the earth she told me the old stories how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock

We're all travelling heavy with illusions.

Let us now celebrate the literary allusion.

All I owe the world is my art.

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

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

That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty.

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

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

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.

Summer coming like a car from down the highway.

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.

Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.

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

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

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.

...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.

My father is an amazing man.

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

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 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?

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

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.

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

Also because I'm ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I'm half of whatever they are.

I'm a poet who can whine in meter

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