Quotes from Sherman Alexie

Inside their small house, Grace listened as Roman stood from the couch and walked into the bathroom. He sat down to piss. She thought that Roman's sit-down pisses were one of the most romantic and caring things that any man had ever done for any woman. After

We spend our lives with the person who has the same scars in the same places.

My white friends were visibly distressed by that loud singer and drummer. One of my friends, whom I shall call Tara, leaned forward and whispered, "I hate Indians." My four other white friends gasped, but it took Tara a few moments to remember that she was sitting beside me, her Indian friend. She burst into tears and spent the rest of the night apologizing. "It's okay," I kept saying. But it wasn't. I was hurt, ashamed, and angry.

But, like water falling drop by drop onto your face for hours and days and weeks, that tiny insults slowly came to have enormous power over me.

She knew Indians were obsessed with authenticity. Colonized, genocided, exiled, Indians formed their identities by questioning the identities of other Indians. Self-hating

my brain is a boardinghouse where my waking consciousness rents one room with a hot plate and a black-and-white TV while the rest of the rooms are occupied by a random assortment of banshees, ghosts, mimes wearing eagle feathers, and approximately twelve thousand strangers who look exactly like me.

But whenever I started in on my crazy theories, Norma would put her finger to my lips really gently. Junior, she would say with gentleness and patience. Shut the fuck up. Norma always was a genius with words.

My mother was a lifeguard on the shores of Lake Fucked.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor.

Diabetes is just like a lover, hurting you from the inside.

He was a white man and, therefore, he was allowed to be romantic.

Why do poets think They can change the world? The only life I can save Is my own.

I took a job teaching private-school white teenagers how to edit video. They used their newly developed skills to make documentaries about poor brown people in other countries. It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.

Because someone needs to help you die the right way," she said. "And we both know that dying ain't something you ever done before.

I wasn't there when the old Indian man from Worley said it, but I know it must be true: Every highway in the world crosses some reservation, cuts it in half.

But it happens mostly because "being American" means "being white," even for a brown boy like me.

family of four coughing blood into handkerchiefs in the examining room.

Remember this: men and pornography are like plants and sunshine. To me, porn is photosynthesis.

You know, I said to my sister later at the funeral. I think Mom is telling the truth about losing us. We're never going to know the exact details. But there's too much real pain in this story for it to be a lie. My sister nodded. She agreed. But what did we agree to? Jesus, we as adults were grateful that our mother had probably told us the truth about endangering us as children. How fucked is that?

Yes, I was bewildered. When was the last time a white American male was truly bewildered or would admit to such a thing? We had taken the world from covered wagons to space shuttles in seventy-five years. After such accomplishment, how could we ever get lost in the wilderness again? How could we not invent a device to guide our souls through the darkness?

Ah, friend, this world—this one universe— Is already too expansive for me. When I die, let my mourners know That I shrugged at the possibility Of other universes. Hire a choir— Let them tell the truth But tell it choral— Let the assembled voices sing About my theology: I'm the fragile and finite mortal Who wanted no part of immortality. 27.

doctor." "Maybe

I think I'm engaged To thirty-six women, my harem: Platonic, bookish, and enraged.

Or maybe I could have anesthetized myself with homework and extra credit and binge-reading.