Sherman Alexie
Non-Indian writers usually say "Great Spirit," "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four-Legged, and Winged." Mixed-blood writers usually say "Creator, "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four- Legged, and Winged." Indian writers usually say "God," "Mother Earth," "Human Being, Dog, and Bird."Collection: Mother
My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport.Collection: Basketball
We only know how to lose and be lost.Collection: Lost
But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan. Overnight I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to the expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew.Collection: Mean
Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.Collection: Winter
That's right, I am a book kisser.Collection: Book
Okay, so maybe I'm romantic... but somebody is supposed to be romantic. Some warrior is supposed to go to war against the imperial forces of cynicism and irony. I am a sentimental soldier.Collection: War
And none of these people, not one of them, had loved any of the others well enough. Failures, he thought, we're all failures... He wanted his love to be the wine and bread, and the blood and flesh. He reached for her, a dangerous stranger in a city of dangerous strangers, but she turned away from him and walked unsteadily through the crowd. How many loveless people walk among the barely loved?Collection: Love
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.Collection: Book
Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.Collection: Men
He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Book
That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.Collection: Eye
You can't sustain [anger]. You become bitter. Nothing's going to change. Anger leads to resentment, then to spiking your orange juice, then to martyrdom.Collection: Orange Juice
My parents banned nothing, though the Christian fundamentalists in my tribe held book-and-record burnings every now and again. So, yes, fundamentalist assholes can also be brown-skinned.Collection: Christian
Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling," she used to say. "Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?Collection: Drinking
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.Collection: Night
We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.Collection: Bye
Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. - "Indian Boy Love Song #1Collection: Dream
She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks.Collection: Coffins
I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their childrenCollection: Children
I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.Collection: Thinking
Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?Collection: Revenge
I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)Collection: Unpredictable
The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.Collection: Two
it's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of wordsCollection: Eye
If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Book
Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I’m on Twitter and I have fun. But I don’t think anybody learns anything about me as a person.Collection: Fun