Quotes About Community

When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.

It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.

I wasn't just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo.

They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.

He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.

Well of course man. We Indians have lost everything. We lost our native land, we lost our languages, we lost our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost.

Well, life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.

Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn't pay well at all.

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.

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

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.

What's so funny?' asked Peone. 'Catholic cops are funny,' said Lester. 'You were listening?' 'Yeah.' 'Yeah? Catholic Indians are funny.' 'There's lots of Catholic Indians.' 'There's lots of Catholic cops.

Reardan is the rich white farm town that sits in the wheat fields exactly 22 miles away from the Rez. And it's a hick town I suppose filled with farmers and rednecks and racists cops who stop every Indian that drives through. During one week when I was little dad got stopped three times for DWI- Driving While Indian.

Sherman Alexie

All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them.

But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other.

world. Put down your fucking guns and pick up your kids.

I am a zero on the rez. And if you subtract zero from zero, you still have zero. So what's the point of subtracting when the answer is always the same?

I was dancing for my soul and for the soul of my tribe. I was dancing for what we Indians used to be and who we might become again.

That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.

But I stopped crying when I noticed that very few people were being openly emotional. I'd never seen that many stoic people at a funeral. I'd never experienced a silent and polite funeral. My tribe doesn't bury our dead that way. We wail, weep, and tell dirty jokes at graveside.

I pretended I belonged.

A man doesn't grow up black in the USA without knowing a lot of crazy black folks, without being born to and giving birth to the breakable and broken.