Sherman Alexie

Writer

1966-10-07

Quotes by Sherman Alexie

• There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.

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• I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.

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• I was crying because I had broken my best friend's heart.

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• They wanted to help me with my pain.

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• There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)

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• How much do we remember of what hurts us most? I've been thinking about pain, how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now. How each successive pain distorts the preceding.

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• I often wonder why I am the one who remember all the pain?

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• Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Summer coming like a car from down the highway.

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• I always think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during the first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians.So I'm never quite sure why we eat turkey like everybody else.

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• If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.

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• He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.

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• But, in the Trump aftermath, I've measured the costsAnd benefits of loving those who don't loveStrangers. After all, I'm often the odd one— The strangest stranger— in any field or room.He was weird will be carved into my tomb.

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• I was emotionally erect.

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• And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either.We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly:

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• Can you hear the dreams crackling like a campfire? Can you hear the dreams sweeping through the pine trees and tipis? Can you hear the dreams laughing in the sawdust? Can you hear the dreams shaking just a little bit as the day grows long? Can you hear the dreams putting on a good jacket that smells of fry bread and sweet smoke? Can you hear the dreams stay up late and talk so many stories?

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• You meet me after school right here, I said.Why? he asked.I couldn't believe he was so stupid.Because we're going to finish this fight.You're crazy, Roger said.He got to his feet and walked away. His gang stared at me like I was a serail killer, and they followed their leader.I was absolutely confused.I had followed the rules of fighting. i had behaved exactly the way I was supposed to behave. But these white boys had ignored the rules. In fact, they followed a whole other set of mysterious rules where people apparently DID NOT GET INTO FISTFIGHTS.(65)

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• Shit, he said. I don't know why you're feeling sorry for yourself because you ain't had to fight a war. You're lucky. Shit, all you had was that damn Desert Storm. Should have called it Dessert Storm because it just made the fat cats get fatter. It was all sugar and whipped cream with a cherry on top. And besides that, you didn't even have to fight in it. All you lost during that was was sleep because you stayed up all night watching CNN.

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