Quotes from Sherman Alexie

I stupidly hoped that time would stand still if I stayed still.

Man, I've always cried too easily. I cry when I'm happy or sad. I cry when I'm angry. I cry because I'm crying. It's weak. It's the opposite of warrior.

If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong." Wow

I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited.

If I stand at this window long enough I will see the long thread of history float randomly through the breeze. This is all I know about peace.

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?

Seattle is Sweden! Extremely liberal, progressive, and very white, with a strong undercurrent of racism.

But he wasn't ugly, just misplaced and marked by loneliness.

You can do it. I can do it. Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.

I wanted to run faster than the speed of sound, but nobody,no matter how much pain they're in, can run that fast.

I mean, I don't think you're supposed to have sex with people you don't love. I know, I know, I know. People do it all the time. But I really think you're supposed to be a little bit in love with them. At least a tiny bit.

I know that death is never added to death; it multiplies.

I wasn't shocked and I'm still not shocked. It's total exploitation, with everything up for grabs. Health care, gone. Destroy the environment in search of more profit. State-sponsored violence. Targeted incarceration. You know what's happening, though: The whole country is becoming a reservation.

He's a big, goofy dreamer, too, just like me. He likes to pretend he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life. So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside. I draw his dreams. And he only talks about his dreams with me. And I only talk about my dreams with him.

I figured any nightmare would be better than my reality.

We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture.

You're cute and smart, and you've gotten everything you've ever asked for, and that makes you lazy and dangerous." "Wow

If you weren't good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own.

I made a list of my favorite books: 1. The Grapes of Wrath 2. Catcher in the Rye 3. Fat Kid Rules the World 4. Tangerine 5. Feed 6. Catalyst 7. Invisible Man 8. Fools Crow 9. Jar of Fools

How much do we remember of what hurts us most? I've been thinking about pain, how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now.

I mean, you have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too.

How much do we remember of what hurts us most? I've been thinking about pain, how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now. How each successive pain distorts the preceding.

The fear of poetry was multicultural and timeless.

The abused can become abusers. It's a tragic progression.