Quotes from Sherman Alexie

I don't think you should run through life with a real erect penis. But you should approach life – with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point.

My mullet was an insecurity shield. My mullet was an ethnic hatchet. My mullet was an arrow on fire. My mullet said to the literary world, Hello, you privileged prep-school assholes, I'm here to steal your thunder, lightning, and book sales.

my nose bled like a firework

boys can hold hands until they turn nine

Jesus, I thought, is there a better and more succinct definition of grief than It hurts a little to breathe, but we're okay?

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.

Great pain is repetitive. Grief is repetitive.

But God has a way of making things even out, I guess.

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

Jesus, I don't want to die today or tomorrow, but I don't want to live forever.

My narcissism could have turned my eulogy Into Law & Order courtroom testimony. I could've said, I felt safe almost half the time With Mom. She protected me against cruelty Three days a week.

Perhaps everybody, indigenous and not, lives on their own kind of reservation.

Sometimes I caught my mother digging through old photo albums or staring at the wall or out the window. She'd get that look on her face that I knew meant she missed my father. Not enough to want him back. She missed him just enough for it to hurt. On

Naked women + right hand = happy happy joy joy

He'd promise to see an organic nutritionist, aromatherapist, deep-tissue masseuse, feng shui consultant, yoga master, and Mormon stand-up comedian if those promises would help him get off this mountain.

She endured a contentious and passionate relationship with this library. The huge number of books confirmed how much magic she'd been denied for most of her life, and now she hungrily wanted to read every book on every shelf. An impossible task, to be sure, Herculean in its exaggeration, but Corliss wanted to read herself to death. She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks. She

Susan Alexie died of tuberculosis on August 30, 1945. I don't know why the exact date of her death is not on her gravestone. Perhaps it had been about money. Those extra letters and numbers might have been too expensive. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I could write I don't know one million times and publish that as my memoir. And, yes, it would be repetitive, experimental, and more metaphor than history, but it would also be emotionally accurate.

And trust me, there are times when the last thing you want to hear is the truth.

Hello," my doctor said. "Are you there?" "Yes," I said. "So, what's going on?" "There are irregularities in your head." "My head's always been wrong

I am always amused by those couples, lovers and spouses who perform and ask others to perform musical chairs whenever they, by random seat selection, are separated from each other. 'Can you switch seats with me, a woman asks me, 'so I can sit with my husband?' 'How dare you? How dare you ask me to change my life for you? How imperial. How colonial.' But, ah, here is the strange truth. Whenever I'm asked to trade seats for somebody else's love, I do. I always do.

Poverty was our spirit animal.

But, no matter what they do, keep walking keep moving. And don't wear a watch. Hell, Indians never need to wear a watch because your skeletons will always remind you about the time. See, it is always now. That's what Indian time is. The past, the future, all of it is wrapped up in the now. That's how it is. We are trapped in the now.

Why did you punch him?" she asked. "He was bullying me." "You should have just walked away." "He called me 'chief.' And 'squaw boy.' " "Then you should have kicked him in the balls.

And, sometimes, when I'm being the best version of myself, I will remember that bullies are created--that bullies seek to torture because they've been tortured.