Quotes from Sherman Alexie

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 really fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me into trouble.

8. Marriage is filled with, among other things, laundry and unanswered questions.

The music of my youth was much better Than the music of yours. So was the weather. ... Back then, people wrote gorgeous letters And read more poetry. So did the weather. ... Of all issues, there was only one dissenter, But we loved him, too. So did the weather. ... We were guitar-players and inventors Of minor chords and antibiotics. So was the weather. From Terminal Nostalgia

I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing. It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy. And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change

Self-preservation was my religion.

A century ago she might have been beautiful, her face reflected in the river instead of a mirror. But all the years have changed more than the shape of our blood and eyes. We wear fear now like a turquoise choker, like a familiar shawl.

I'd wanted to say something epic and honest. But epics are rarely honest, and honesty should never be epic.

I don't grieve everybody that I have lost.

You've got a lot of crafty ambition for an Indian boy who can't sew for shit.

How many books do you have here?" Corliss asked. "Two million, one hundred thousand, and eleven," the librarian said proudly, but Corliss was frightened. What happens to the world when that many books go unread? And what happens to the unread authors of those unread books?

There are so many new skyscrapers being built in our city of rain, I wonder if everybody's spirit animal is now the construction crane.

But mostly it feels sad, often hopeless, and hot with loneliness.

I don't think there is a saint of orthodontics.

So, yeah, honestly speaking, fuck you, Xavier, and the farm-raised salmon you rode in on.

surrounded by five hundred years of convenient lies.

Don't know," we all said, but when we look in the mirror, see the history of our tribe in our eyes, taste failure in the tap water, and shake with old tears, we understand completely. Believe me, everything looks like a noose if you stare at it long enough.

Indians, indians, indians." She said it without capitalization. She called me "indian, indian, indian." And I said, Yes, I am. I am Indian. Indian, I am.

I want all kinds of strangers to love me. The Indian horses screamed.

The old Indian women dipped wooden spoons into stews and stirred and stirred. The stews made of random vegetables and commodity food, of failed dreams and predictable tears.

I like to go to garage sales with my mom, so maybe my name should be OLD TOYS ARE AWESOME.

Silence was his short bow and quiver of arrows.

Maybe his heart was okay; maybe it had missed only one dance step in a lifetime of otherwise lovely coronary waltzes.

swore he told us not to slow dance with our skeletons.

Ya=hey, he called out to the movement of air, the unseen. A summer before, Uncle Moses listened to his nephew John-John talking a story. John-John was back from college and told Moses that 99 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to the human eye. Ever since, Moses made sure to greet what he could not see.