Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.

He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.

Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.

I knew I was being an idiot. But I figured if I kept being an idiot, if I didn’t actually accept the truth, then the truth would become false.

I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there’s some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of,...

I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn’t want to be another disappointing Indian.

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...

I got in a fight with my girlfriend,” I said. “I was just driving around, blowing off steam, you know?”Well, you should be more careful where you drive,” the officer said. “You’re making people nervous....

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.

Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.

My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we’d lie in the same bed, and I’d read...

I don’t have to participate in another culture’s ceremonies in order to respect that culture.

More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years.

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes,...

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 father’s life. He felt like he...

The problem is that too many adults think their kids’ lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a...

My father is an amazing man.

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,...

I hate my country. There are so many rich people who don’t share their shit. They’re like spoiled little ten-year-old bullies on the playground. They hog the monkey bars and the slide and the seesaw....

I’m a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it.

If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.

What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

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

I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there.

I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.

And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel. Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy...

If it’s fiction, then it better be true.

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. . . . Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking...

But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic.

Well,” she said, “how can I be sure there aren’t invisible people in the world? Scientists didn’t believe in the mountain gorilla for hundreds of years. And now look. So if scientists can be wrong,...

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...

He sang ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

son,” Mr. P said. “You’re going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation.

I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,’ I said. ‘By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes:...

Sometimes, she wondered what she was missing, if her life was somehow incomplete because she didn’t see the reflection of her face in the face of a son or daughter. Maybe. That’s what mothers told...

Certainly I’m angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don’t think it’s a helpless emotion.

I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.

I learned how to stop crying.I learned how to hide inside of myself.I learned how to be somebody else.I learned how to be cold and numb.

Poetry = Anger x Imagination

They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We’re the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.

My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac.

Despite all of the time he spent in Big Heart’s, Wilson had never come to understand the social lives of Indians. He did not know that, in the Indian world, there is not much social...

I would close my eyes and dream of something strong, dream of horses exploding, rising into the air, their hearts beating survive, survive, survive.

He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.

If I wasn’t writing poems I’d be washing my hands all the time.

Then I remember that God is really, really old. So maybe God has God arthritis. And maybe that’s why the world sucks. Maybe God’s hands and fingers don’t work as well as they used to.

Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.

For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moments in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her...

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.