Top 400 Sherman Alexie Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Okay, now you’re officially a freak,” I said. “Yes, it’s a small library. It’s a tiny one. But if you read one of these books a day, it would still take you almost ten years to finish.” “What’s your point?” “The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.” Wow.”

— Sherman Alexie

202. “Spiritual matters should be private.”

— Sherman Alexie

203. “It’s one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they’re the hugest words in the world when they’re put together. You can do it.”

— Sherman Alexie

204. “My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me – not so much the positive stuff, but the damage.”

— Sherman Alexie

205. “Junior based all of his decisions on his dreams and visions, which created a lot of problems.”

— Sherman Alexie

206. “My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.”

— Sherman Alexie

207. “And, sometimes, when I’m being the best version of myself, I will remember that bullies are created – that bullies seek to torture because they’ve been tortured.”

— Sherman Alexie

208. “Dear wife, I’m sorry that I am mysteriously incapable of folding clean laundry, but I iron, oh, I iron. Sweetheart, I’ll make your white shirt so crisp and sharp that it will split atoms as you walk.”

— Sherman Alexie

209. “I don’t recall the moment when I officially became a storyteller – a talented liar – but here I must quote Simon Ortiz, the Acoma Pueblo writer, who said, “Listen. If it’s fiction, then it better be true.”

— Sherman Alexie

210. “Hell, sometimes it feels like the whole country is on fire. Like a constant conflagration is burning too close to all poor people. Shouldn’t rich-ass America be taking care of everybody?”

— Sherman Alexie

211. “That word means ‘earth-dream’. And, depending on how you use it, it means we, the people, are dreaming the earth into being. And it also means the earth is dreaming us, the people, into being. We are dreaming each other. And making each other real. And it means other things, too, that I don’t understand. That I might never understand. But I am going to keep learning.”

— Sherman Alexie

212. “Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against the starvation. We survived because we trusted one another.”

— Sherman Alexie

213. “What about me?” I asked. “Am I mean?” “You aren’t mean to me with words,” she said. “You’re mean to me with your silences.”

— Sherman Alexie

214. “Everything, everything, everything can be installation art.”

— Sherman Alexie

215. “He smiled mysteriously. Adults are so good at smiling mysteriously. Do they go to college for that?”

— Sherman Alexie

216. “And the tombstone will never answer. Because the dead have only the voices we give to them.”

— Sherman Alexie

217. “Words can be like that, you know? Whenever I get into arguments now, I remember her and I also remember Muhammad Ali. He knew the power of his fists but, more importantly, he knew the power of his words, too.”

— Sherman Alexie

218. “I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.”

— Sherman Alexie

219. “I can’t remember how to cry.”

— Sherman Alexie

220. “I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian – that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature.”

— Sherman Alexie

221. “But a person can be genocided-can have every connection to his past severed- and live to be an old man whose rib cage is a haunted house built around his heart.”

— Sherman Alexie

222. “Branch by branch, Rowdy and I climbed toward the top of the tree, to the bottom of the sky.”

— Sherman Alexie

223. “You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don’t realize it.”

— Sherman Alexie

224. “Unlike landed white men, she didn’t need to climb mountains to experience mystic panic. All she needed was to set her alarm dock for the next morning, wake when it rang, and go to class.”

— Sherman Alexie

225. “I was crying because I had broken my best friend’s heart.”

— Sherman Alexie

226. “If you can catch crazy, I’m a walking epidemic.”

— Sherman Alexie

227. “I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.”

— Sherman Alexie

228. “Sometimes I caught my mother digging through old photo albums or staring at the wall or out the window. She’d get that look on her face that I knew meant she missed my father. Not enough to want him back. She missed him just enough for it to hurt. On.”

— Sherman Alexie

229. “I was emotionally erect.”

— Sherman Alexie

230. “Those Montana Indians were so tough that white people were scared of them. Can you imagine a place where white people are scared of Indians and not the other way around? That’s Montana.”

— Sherman Alexie

231. “My mother once made a quilt from dozens of pairs of second- and third- and fourth- hand blue jeans that she bought us at Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Value Village, and garage sales. My late sister studied my mother’s denim quilt and said, ‘That’s a lot of pants. There’s been a lot of ass in those pants. This is a blanket of asses.”

— Sherman Alexie

232. “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.”

— Sherman Alexie

233. “The problem for me with liberals is that we’ve abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe.”

— Sherman Alexie

234. “He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could.”

— Sherman Alexie

235. “Dozens of species of insects give virgin birth. Crayfish give virgin birth. Some honeybees give virgin birth. And Komodo dragons – yeah, those big lizards give virgin birth, too. Jeez, one human gives virgin birth and that jump-starts one of the world’s greatest religions. But when a Komodo dragon gives virgin birth, do you know what it’s thinking? It’s thinking, ‘This is Tuesday, right? I think this is Tuesday. What am I going to do on Wednesday?”

— Sherman Alexie

236. “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.”

— Sherman Alexie

237. “My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac.”

— Sherman Alexie

238. “They’re not starving to death, but they look hollow-eyed and barren, like they’ve been fed just enough food but never enough happiness.”

— Sherman Alexie

239. “My heart is beating a punk rock song against my chest.”

— Sherman Alexie

240. “Imagine Columbus landed in 1492 and some tribe or another drowned him in the ocean. Would Lester FallsApart still be shoplifting in the 7-11?”

— Sherman Alexie

241. “You have to treat your car with love. And I don’t mean love of an object. You see, that’s just wrong. That’s materialism. You have to love your car like it’s sentient being, like it can love you back. Now, that’s some deep-down agape love.”

— Sherman Alexie

242. “I don’t have to participate in another culture’s ceremonies in order to respect that culture.”

— Sherman Alexie

243. “Only in rock music and the literary world you see so many ugly white guys with beautiful women. That says a lot about the women, their character. They’re attracted to more than surface.”

— Sherman Alexie

244. “How does one survive these revelations? One just lives.”

— Sherman Alexie

245. “I didn’t yet know that romantic heroes – famous and not – are usually aimless nomads in disguise.”

— Sherman Alexie

246. “My father is an amazing man.”

— Sherman Alexie

247. “I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn’t want to be another disappointing Indian.”

— Sherman Alexie

248. “Late at night I go out and listen to the wind. That’s all the wisdom I need. I mean, I love books, but shoot, most of the world’s wisdom is not contained in books.”

— Sherman Alexie

249. “I’m a poet who can whine in meter.”

— Sherman Alexie

250. “The fear of poetry was multicultural and timeless.”

— Sherman Alexie