Quotes from Sherman Alexie

We didn't domesticate cats. They domesticated themselves. But not totally, you know? You take a good look at any house cat, and you can tell there's eventually going to be a day when it goes back wild, you know? When it reverts to its true nature. You fall over and die in a house with your dog, and your dog will lie down beside your dead body, maybe right on top of it, and starve to death. But a house cat will feast on your eyes as soon as its stomach starts growling.

I was crying because I had broken my best friend's heart.

You have to get very comfortable with the idea of being lonely. For all of human history, we've always run away from being lonely and now there are even more distractions. But that's the thing—if you're going to make the decision to rebel against your tribe, you're going to get very lonely.

Sometimes you don't have enough money to hire a real science teacher. Sometimes you have an old real science teacher who retires or quits and leaves you without a replacement. And if you don't have a real science teacher, then you pick one of the other teachers and make him the science teacher. And that's why small-town kids sometimes don't know the truth about petrified wood.

At what point do we just re-create the people who have disappeared from our lives?

Sometimes we meet a character and we fall so hopelessly in love with him or her that we want to be that character, no matter how tough they have it, no matter how they might mess things up.

Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection, What happens to the soul that hates its reflection?

I had left the tribe, and I was being punished for that.

I can't remember how to cry.

And finally this, when the sun was falling down so beautiful we didn't have time to give it a name, she held the child born of white mother and red father and said,' Both sides of this baby are beautiful'.

but I know somebody must be thinking about us because if they weren't we'd just disappear just like those Indians who used to climb the pueblos. Those Indians disappeared with food still cooking in the pot and air waiting to be breathed and they turned into birds or dust or the blue of the sky or the yellow of the sun. There they were and suddenly they were forgotten for just a second and for just a second nobody thought about them and then they were gone.

Sharing dark skin doesn't necessarily make two men brothers

An Indian's wealth   Is determined by what they lose And not by what they save.

I realized that my mother had not taught us the tribal language because she knew her children would not be strong enough to carry the responsibility of being the last fluent speakers. She protected us from that spiritual burden. She protected us from that loneliness.

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.

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

She wanted to find a way to love them in death, because she forgot how to love them in life.

James tells the crowd that the river is just a few yards from where we stand is all we ever need to believe in. One white woman asks how old James is and I tell her he's seven and she tells me that he's so smart for an Indian boy. James hears this and tells the white woman that she's pretty smart for an old white woman.

son, Mr. P said. You're going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation.

Your mother is a better man than me. Mothers are almost always better men than men are.

And I laughed because half of me was happy and half of me wasn't sure what else to do.

I bet you a million dollars there are less than five books in this whole house. What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

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

Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is nicknamed the Indians, and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot. This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN. Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much.