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after childbirth; women whose hopes and fears had been pushed to the back of the family closet; women who'd magically been replaced by their children and their children's desires.”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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“I seem to be an expert at getting people's backs up. And I fully admit to occasionally doing it on purpose. Must be the boredom." Alex sighed.
"You mean, you like to test people? Push them to their limits? Use the shock tactic of saying out loud the things that most other human beings wouldn't dare to? In order to deflate them, to break down their guard, which immediately puts you in control?"
"Touche, Madam." Alex looked at her with new respect. "Well now, with that piercing riposte, plus the slap this afternoon, I'd say we're quits, wouldn't you?”
― Lucinda Riley, quote from The Light Behind the Window
“It was not man who implanted in himself what is infinite and the love of what is immortal: those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in spite of his efforts. He may cross and distort them – destroy them he cannot. The soul wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome II
“There is a God part in you. The consciousness. The pure Self. Learn to listen the voice of that Power.”
― Amit Ray, quote from Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
“That's what we do. We sex things up.”
― Lauren Layne, quote from The Trouble with Love
“Any man who is friends with a woman has taken the old imagination out for a stroll to Kissing Avenue, then Lovers Lane, then Fucking Street.”
― Lauren Blakely, quote from Big Rock
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