Top 400 Sherman Alexie Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “It’s war paint,” Rowdy always says.”

— Sherman Alexie

352. “Love at first sight is always romantic, right? But have you ever heard about people becoming best friends at first sight? Have you ever heard of two Indian boys becoming instant best friends? Becoming best friends the first time they ever talk to each other? After they’ve only said maybe ten words to each other?”

— Sherman Alexie

353. “I’m not an Indian warrior chief. I’m not some demure little Indian woman healer talking spider this, spider that, am I? I’m not babbling about the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I’m talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first century Indian, and you can’t handle it, you wimp.”

— Sherman Alexie

354. “Despite all the talk of diversity and division – of red and blue states, of black and white and brown people, of rich and poor, gay and straight – Paul believed that Americans were shockingly similar. How can we be so different, thought Paul, if we all know the lyrics to the same one thousand songs?”

— Sherman Alexie

355. “We all justify our sins, venal or mortal.”

— Sherman Alexie

356. “Silence was his short bow and quiver of arrows.”

— Sherman Alexie

357. “Poverty was our spirit animal.”

— Sherman Alexie

358. “He was like some kind of Star Wars alien creature with invisible tentacles that sucked your thoughts out of your brain.”

— Sherman Alexie

359. “But, like water falling drop by drop onto your face for hours and days and weeks, that tiny insults slowly came to have enormous power over me.”

— Sherman Alexie

360. “Why did you punch him?” she asked. “He was bullying me.” “You should have just walked away.” “He called me ‘chief.’ And ‘squaw boy.’ ” “Then you should have kicked him in the balls.”

— Sherman Alexie

361. “We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren’t trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture.”

— Sherman Alexie

362. “We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn’t matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories.”

— Sherman Alexie

363. “It’s not like anybody’s going to notice if you go away,” he said. “So you might as well gut it out.” Isn’t.”

— Sherman Alexie

364. “When people consider the meaning of genocide, they might only think of corpses being pushed into mass graves. 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

365. “Nobody knew the truth. Of course, you can’t lie forever. Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad.”

— Sherman Alexie

366. “I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited.”

— Sherman Alexie

367. “Self-preservation was my religion.”

— Sherman Alexie

368. “Junior talks about it – relating to dozens if not hundreds of tribes. Even as the world tries to define you, narrow the definition of you, don’t do it to yourself. True.”

— Sherman Alexie

369. “I wanted to live up to expectations. I guess that’s what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And.”

— Sherman Alexie

370. “The old Indian women dipped wooden spoons into stews and stirred and stirred. The stews made of random vegetables and commodity food, of failed dreams and predictable tears.”

— Sherman Alexie

371. “Son, things have never been like how you think they used to be.”

— Sherman Alexie

372. “What’s real? I ain’t interested in what’s real. I’m interested in how things should be.”

— Sherman Alexie

373. “Why don’t you call somebody with the Coeur d’Alene tribe? A historian or somebody? Or be really crazy and ask one of our cousins what they know.” “I can’t,” I said. “I’m too embarrassed to let them know how much I don’t know.” “They’re sure gonna.”

— Sherman Alexie

374. “I stupidly hoped that time would stand still if I stayed still.”

— Sherman Alexie

375. “8. Marriage is filled with, among other things, laundry and unanswered questions.”

— Sherman Alexie

376. “Everybody prayed; everybody lied about it. Even atheists prayed on airplanes and bingo nights.”

— Sherman Alexie

377. “I’d wanted to say something epic and honest. But epics are rarely honest, and honesty should never be epic.”

— Sherman Alexie

378. “The two funniest tribes I’ve ever been around are Indians and Jews, so I guess that says something about the inherent humor of genocide.”

— Sherman Alexie

379. “Paul believed American greatness and the ghosts of that greatness surrounded him. But who could publicly express such a belief and not be ridiculed as a patriotic fool? Paul believed in his fellow Americans, in their extraordinary decency, in their awesome ability to transcend religion, race, and class, but what leftist could state such things and ever hope to get laid by any other lefty?”

— Sherman Alexie

380. “But I don’t know how much joy she experienced while loving me. I don’t know how much joy I was capable of feeling or providing.”

— Sherman Alexie

381. “So maybe they are mute with post-traumatic stress. Maybe they don’t know how to talk about Mike. I often wonder why I’m the one who remembers All the pain. Why am I the one who remains obsessed By the bloody nose, but rarely remembers any joy?”

— Sherman Alexie

382. “Am I defined by what I’ve seen, or do I define the world by what I’ve witnessed? O, what beautiful or terrible thing waits around the next corner? Who isn’t in love with this mystery?”

— Sherman Alexie

383. “So, back in the day, weird people threatened the strength of the tribe. If you weren’t good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own.” “But we’re not primitive like that anymore.” “Oh, yes, we are. Weird people still get banished.” “You mean weird people like.”

— Sherman Alexie

384. “I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil – I don’t know which.”

— Sherman Alexie

385. “I made a list of my favorite books: 1. The Grapes of Wrath 2. Catcher in the Rye 3. Fat Kid Rules the World 4. Tangerine 5. Feed 6. Catalyst 7. Invisible Man 8. Fools Crow 9. Jar of Fools.”

— Sherman Alexie

386. “Sharon was Apache, and I was Spokane, but we practiced our tribal religions like we practiced Catholicism: We loved all of the ceremonies but thought they were pitiful cries to a disinterested god.”

— Sherman Alexie

387. “Mostly, I just think Mr. P is a lonely old man who used to be a lonely young man. And for some reason I don’t understand, lonely white people love to hang around lonelier Indians.”

— Sherman Alexie

388. “Be Still, be still, she would say between her teeth, but Arnold loved his body too much to remain still.”

— Sherman Alexie

389. “There is a good day to die and there is a good day to play the piano.”

— Sherman Alexie

390. “But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.”

— Sherman Alexie

391. “I want all kinds of strangers to love me. The Indian horses screamed.”

— Sherman Alexie

392. “Maybe his heart was okay; maybe it had missed only one dance step in a lifetime of otherwise lovely coronary waltzes.”

— Sherman Alexie

393. “Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss army knives.”

— Sherman Alexie

394. “Zsa Zsa was charismatic in the banal and voracious way that reality stars like Kim Kardashian are charismatic now.”

— Sherman Alexie

395. “How many books do you have here?” Corliss asked. “Two million, one hundred thousand, and eleven,” the librarian said proudly, but Corliss was frightened. What happens to the world when that many books go unread? And what happens to the unread authors of those unread books?”

— Sherman Alexie

396. “Lynn’s parents refused to accept Sean Casey’s Indian blood and, in fact, exhibited a kind of denial that was nearly pathological in its intensity.”

— Sherman Alexie

397. “Ah, friend, this world – this one universe – Is already too expansive for me. When I die, let my mourners know That I shrugged at the possibility Of other universes. Hire a choir – Let them tell the truth But tell it choral – Let the assembled voices sing About my theology: I’m the fragile and finite mortal Who wanted no part of immortality. 27.”

— Sherman Alexie

398. “Yes, I was bewildered. When was the last time a white American male was truly bewildered or would admit to such a thing? We had taken the world from covered wagons to space shuttles in seventy-five years. After such accomplishment, how could we ever get lost in the wilderness again? How could we not invent a device to guide our souls through the darkness?”

— Sherman Alexie

399. “He was a white man and, therefore, he was allowed to be romantic.”

— Sherman Alexie

400. “I really miss those cafeterias they use to have in Kmart. I don’t know why they stopped having those. If there is a Heaven then I firmly believe it’s a Kmart cafeteria.”

— Sherman Alexie