Top 400 Sherman Alexie Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “How can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when they say the same things?”

— Sherman Alexie

102. “I didn’t know what to say to her. What do you say to people when they ask how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?”

— Sherman Alexie

103. “But how can I get enough experience if they don’t give me a chance to get experience?”

— Sherman Alexie

104. “He was the loser Indian father of a loser Indian son living in a world built for winners.”

— Sherman Alexie

105. “I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them.”

— Sherman Alexie

106. “The reservation doesn’t sing anymore but the songs still hang in the air. Every molecule waits for a drumbeat; every element dreams lyrics. Today I am walking between water, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, and the energy expelled is named Forgiveness.”

— Sherman Alexie

107. “If God really loved Indians, he would have made us white people.”

— Sherman Alexie

108. “It’s not oil that runs the world, it’s shame.”

— Sherman Alexie

109. “My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud. What do you do when the world has declared nuclear war on you?”

— Sherman Alexie

110. “I look more Indian when I’m serious.”

— Sherman Alexie

111. “Jeez, it was a lot of pressure to put on a kid. I was carrying the burden of my race, you know? I was going to get a bad back from it.”

— Sherman Alexie

112. “What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.”

— Sherman Alexie

113. “So I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me.”

— Sherman Alexie

114. “Let us now celebrate the literary allusion.”

— Sherman Alexie

115. “Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.”

— Sherman Alexie

116. “She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.”

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

118. “That’s right, I am a book kisser.”

— Sherman Alexie

119. “White Americans have a short memory.”

— Sherman Alexie

120. “I don’t know if hope is white. But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature.”

— Sherman Alexie

121. “During one week when I was little, Dad got stopped three times for DWI: Driving While Indian.”

— Sherman Alexie

122. “And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel. Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her. And a little scared. Well, a lot scared.”

— Sherman Alexie

123. “I then vowed to finally finish the years-late sequel to my best-selling book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I needed that money. My mother needed that money. I hadn’t been able to finish the book because of the pathological fear that my sequel would be The Phantom Menace instead of The Empire Strikes Back. But, on the airplane, I thought, “Okay, okay, Phantom sucked, but it still made big cash. I’m gonna Yoda this book for my mother.”

— Sherman Alexie

124. “On a reservation, Indian men who abandon their children are treated worse than white fathers who do the same thing. It’s because white men have been doing that forever and Indian men have just learned how. That’s how assimilation can work.”

— Sherman Alexie

125. “But it wasn’t okay. It was about as far from okay as you can get. If okay was the earth, then I was standing on Jupiter. I don’t know why I said it was okay. For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart yet again.”

— Sherman Alexie

126. “When you’re depressed, you know, it’s like the world has ended. Even getting out of bed takes the most massive amount of effort. But when you’re manic, oh, it’s so addicting. You know, I have finished novels in two weeks in manic stages.”

— Sherman Alexie

127. “I know that death is never added to death; it multiplies.”

— Sherman Alexie

128. “One play can change your momentum forever.”

— Sherman Alexie

129. “Being colonized automatically makes you bipolar.”

— Sherman Alexie

130. “My sister is running away to get lost, but I am running away because I want to find something. And my parents love me so much that they want to help me. Yeah, Dad is a drunk and Mom is an ex-drunk, but they don’t want their kids to be drunks.”

— Sherman Alexie

131. “I mean, yeah, my dad would sometimes go on a drinking binge and be gone for a week, but those white dads can completely disappear without ever leaving the living room.”

— Sherman Alexie

132. “I am surrounded by people who trust me to be a respectful stranger. Am I trustworthy? Are any of us trustworthy? I hope so.”

— Sherman Alexie

133. “Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn’t know Indians, and he didn’t know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin’ booze.”

— Sherman Alexie

134. “I’ve come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.”

— Sherman Alexie

135. “But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.”

— Sherman Alexie

136. “Things had gotten so intense, so painful, that my body just checked out. Yep, my mind and soul and heart had a quick meeting and voted to shut down for a few repairs.”

— Sherman Alexie

137. “My father went on a legendary drinking binge. My mother went to church every single day. It was all booze and God, booze and God, booze and God.”

— Sherman Alexie

138. “Gay people were seen as magical, too. I mean, like in many cultures, men were viewed as warriors and women were viewed as caregivers. But gay people, being both male and female, were seen as both warriors and caregivers. Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss Army knives!”

— Sherman Alexie

139. “I wasn’t just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo.”

— Sherman Alexie

140. “Held on to me like I was a baby. And she kept crying. So many tears. My clothes and hair were soaked with her tears. It was, like, my mother had given me a grief shower, you know? Like she’d baptized me with her pain.”

— Sherman Alexie

141. “What kind of life can you have in a house without books?”

— Sherman Alexie

142. “Okay, so it’s like each of these books is a mystery. Every book is a mystery. And if you read all of the books ever written, it’s like you’ve read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you keep on learning so much more you need to learn.”

— Sherman Alexie

143. “Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.”

— Sherman Alexie

144. “We only know how to lose and be lost.”

— Sherman Alexie

145. “I remember when people used to think I was smart. I remember when people used to think my brain was useful. Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical.”

— Sherman Alexie

146. “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.”

— Sherman Alexie

147. “Indian boys weren’t supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren’t supposed to dream big, either.”

— Sherman Alexie

148. “So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.”

— Sherman Alexie

149. “You wouldn’t think there is anything life threatening about speech impediments, but let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous than being a kid with a stutter and a lisp.”

— Sherman Alexie

150. “I am surrounded by people who trust me to be a respectful stranger.”

— Sherman Alexie