Sherman Alexie · 238 pages
Rating: (6.1K votes)
“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“If it's fiction, then it better be true.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Instead, I woke early the next morning, before sunrise, and went out into the world. I walked past my car. I stepped onto the pavement, still warm from the previous day’s sun. I started walking. In bare feet, I traveled upriver toward the place where I was born and will someday die. At that moment, if you had broken open my heart you could have looked inside and seen the thin white skeletons of one thousand salmon.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“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 her: Oh, you don't know what you're missing; it's spiritual; I feel closer to the earth, to the creator of all things. Perhaps all of that was true--it must be true--but Grace also knew that mothering was work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. She'd known too many women who'd vanished after childbirth; women whose hopes and fears had been pushed to the back of the family closet; women who'd magically been replaced by their children and their children's desires.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love--it just happens!--but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left--the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they're idiots. Especially if they're idiots. You can't just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they're crazy.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“What do you have to worry about? That you're lonely? That you have a mortgage? That your wife doesn't love you? F you, F you. I have to worry about having enough to eat!”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“You have to treat your car with love. And I don’t mean love of an object. You see, that’s just wrong. That’s materialism. You have to love your car like it’s sentient being, like it can love you back. Now, that’s some deep-down agape love.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“world. Put down your fucking guns and pick up your kids.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Seymour looked around the Tucson McDonald's. There were white people and Mavajos; there were people who preferred their Quarter Pounders with cheese and those who didn't care for cheese at all; and there were those who desperately wish that McDonald's would introduce onion rings to its menu.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Inside their small house, Grace listened as Roman stood from the couch and walked into the bathroom. He sat down to piss. She thought that Roman’s sit-down pisses were one of the most romantic and caring things that any man had ever done for any woman. After”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“He was a white man and, therefore, he was allowed to be romantic.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“Whites and Indians laughed at most of the same jokes, but they laughed for different reasons.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
“How often had men sat around dinner tables and discussed women’s lives, their choices, and the reasons why one woman reached across the bed to touch another woman?”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Toughest Indian in the World
Sherman Alexie
Born place: in Spokane, Washington, The United States
Born date October 7, 1966
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“Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born.”
― Michelle Alexander, quote from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
“Lanser said, "There are no peaceful people, when will you learn it? There are no friendly people, can't you understand that?”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“She was home (in Heaven). She was with the Person she was made for, in the place that was made for her.”
― Randy Alcorn, quote from Courageous
“When you get famous or rich and maybe you think that you wish I was there to see it, remember that one way or the other I am.”
― Steve Kluger, quote from Last Days of Summer
“The only clue to what is in people's minds is in their behavior. If a man behaves strangely, oddly, is not himself--
Then you suspect him?
No. That is just what I mean. A man whose mind is evil and whose intentions are evil is conscious of that fact and he knows that he must conceal it all costs. He dare not, therefore, afford any unusual behavior.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Death Comes as the End
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