Top 400 Sherman Alexie Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I think I was born with a suitcase.”

— Sherman Alexie

52. “My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures.”

— Sherman Alexie

53. “If the government wants to hide somebody, there’s probably no place more isolated than my reservation, which is located approximately one million miles north of Important and two billion miles west of Happy.”

— Sherman Alexie

54. “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.”

— Sherman Alexie

55. “I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.”

— Sherman Alexie

56. “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.”

— Sherman Alexie

57. “And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.”

— Sherman Alexie

58. “If I wasn’t writing poems I’d be washing my hands all the time.”

— Sherman Alexie

59. “Well, as a native, as a colonized people you do live in the in between. The thing is I’m native. But necessarily because I’m a member of the country, I’m also a White American.”

— Sherman Alexie

60. “At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.”

— Sherman Alexie

61. “But I’m also addicted to books. And I know there has never been a human being or a television show, no matter how great, that could measure up to a great book.”

— Sherman Alexie

62. “Summer coming like a car from down the highway.”

— Sherman Alexie

63. “If you care about something enough, its going to make you cry.”

— Sherman Alexie

64. “He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.”

— Sherman Alexie

65. “There isn’t a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don’t know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap.”

— Sherman Alexie

66. “Because I want to be remembered.”

— Sherman Alexie

67. “You’re always making up stuff from the past,” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.”

— Sherman Alexie

68. “Certainly I’m angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don’t think it’s a helpless emotion.”

— Sherman Alexie

69. “It really made me wish I was Roman or Greek, you know? A classical Greek god would have killed his lying, cheating father and then given him forgiveness. And a classical Greek god would have better abs, too. That’s what Greek gods are all about, you know? Patricide and low body fat.”

— Sherman Alexie

70. “Also because I’m ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I’m half of whatever they are.”

— Sherman Alexie

71. “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.”

— Sherman Alexie

72. “I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.”

— Sherman Alexie

73. “There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.”

— Sherman Alexie

74. “Great pain is repetitive. Grief is repetitive. And, maybe, this repetition can become a chant inside a healing ceremony.”

— Sherman Alexie

75. “She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks.”

— Sherman Alexie

76. “I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.”

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

78. “Doesn’t an Indian tribe finally surrender to colonization by becoming as capitalistic as our conquerors? Isn’t indigenous economic sovereignty one of the sneakiest damn oxymorons of all time?”

— Sherman Alexie

79. “The people who loved me when I was seven years old love my books, and the people who didn’t like me when I was seven years old don’t like my books.”

— Sherman Alexie

80. “I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you’re pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I’m a witness because I’m not participating.”

— Sherman Alexie

81. “If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.”

— Sherman Alexie

82. “Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred.”

— Sherman Alexie

83. “I ain’t interested in the truth. I’m interested in the way things should be.”

— Sherman Alexie

84. “I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.”

— Sherman Alexie

85. “Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.”

— Sherman Alexie

86. “In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.”

— Sherman Alexie

87. “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?”

— Sherman Alexie

88. “Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands.”

— Sherman Alexie

89. “Of course, you can’t lie forever. Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.”

— Sherman Alexie

90. “They call me an apple because they think I’m red on the outside and white on the inside.”

— Sherman Alexie

91. “I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

— Sherman Alexie

92. “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.”

— Sherman Alexie

93. “Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers.”

— Sherman Alexie

94. “Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.”

— Sherman Alexie

95. “There’s never enough time to change your life. You don’t get to change your life, period.”

— Sherman Alexie

96. “Mary was a bright and shining star,” Mr. P said. “And then she faded year by year until you could barely see her anymore.”

— Sherman Alexie

97. “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.”

— Sherman Alexie

98. “I felt brave all of a sudden. Yeah, maybe it was just a stupid and immature school yard fight. Or maybe it was the most important moment of my life. Maybe I was telling the world that I was no longer a human target.”

— Sherman Alexie

99. “I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn’t have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.”

— Sherman Alexie

100. “A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.”

— Sherman Alexie