Quotes by Sherman Alexie

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.

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.

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)

Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.

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

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

They wanted to help me with my pain.

I was crying because I had broken my best friends heart.

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

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

He was going to punish me now. He couldnt beat me up with his old man fists, but he could hurt me with his old man words.

It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.

My grandmothers last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance.

An Indian’s wealth   Is determined by what they lose And not by what they save.

I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing hed ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex. Do you believe in God? I asked my father.God has lots of potential, he said.When you pray, I asked him. What do you pray about?Thats none of your business, he said. We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border.

I knew I was being an idiot. But I figured if I kept being an idiot, if I didnt actually accept the truth, then the truth would become false.

Great pain is repetitive. Grief is repetitive.

He felt split in two, one crazy man eating hair and one rational man watching a crazy man eat hair. He chewed and swallowed the last pieces of his fathers life. He felt like he was building a museum of pain, a freak show, where he was the only visitor viewing the only mutant screaming the only prayer he knew: Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back Daddy...

You’re always making up stuff from the past,” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.

Thats 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 the 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 Ill never tell you and Ill never show you the same trick twice. Im traveling heavy with illusions.