Top 400 Sherman Alexie Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “There is a good day to die and there is a good day to play the piano.”

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

408. “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

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

— Sherman Alexie

410. “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

411. “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

412. “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

413. “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

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

— Sherman Alexie

415. “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

416. “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

417. “We spend our lives with the person who has the same scars in the same places.”

— Sherman Alexie

418. “Sometimes you don’t something is true until you hear it for the first time.”

— Sherman Alexie

419. “But mostly it feels sad, often hopeless, and hot with loneliness.”

— Sherman Alexie

420. “When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know?”

— Sherman Alexie

421. “Or maybe I could have anesthetized myself with homework and extra credit and binge-reading.”

— Sherman Alexie

422. “Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap.”

— Sherman Alexie

423. “Grief is scary and beautiful, too, I thought, but did not text.”

— Sherman Alexie

424. “Because someone needs to help you die the right way,” she said. “And we both know that dying ain’t something you ever done before.”

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

426. “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

427. “F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the sign of a superior mind ‘is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time.’ Do you believe this is true? And is it also true that you once said, ‘The only time white people tell the truth is when they keep their mouths shut’?”

— Sherman Alexie

428. “My white friends were visibly distressed by that loud singer and drummer. One of my friends, whom I shall call Tara, leaned forward and whispered, “I hate Indians.” My four other white friends gasped, but it took Tara a few moments to remember that she was sitting beside me, her Indian friend. She burst into tears and spent the rest of the night apologizing. “It’s okay,” I kept saying. But it wasn’t. I was hurt, ashamed, and angry.”

— Sherman Alexie

429. “The professor ignored Lynn’s comments and proceeded with his lecture.”

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

431. “What scares me least? The Afterlife. Really. Who cares? I’m going to be a good person no matter what is supposed to happen after I die.”

— Sherman Alexie

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

— Sherman Alexie

433. “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

434. “It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

— Sherman Alexie

435. “But God has a way of making things even out, I guess.”

— Sherman Alexie

436. “Grief is a plastic surgeon.”

— Sherman Alexie

437. “If you weren’t good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own.”

— Sherman Alexie

438. “After our earliest ancestors crawled out of the oceans, how soon did they feel the desire to crawl back in?”

— Sherman Alexie