Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie, Jr. is an award-winning and prolific writer (of novels, short stories, poems, and screenplays) and occasional comedian who lives in Seattle, Washington. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a modern Native American (he is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian) in the United States.

Sourced

• When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.
  • The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)

Smoke Signals (1998)

• Thomas: Hey Victor! I'm sorry 'bout your dad.
  Victor: How'd you hear about it?
  Thomas: I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. And your mom was just in here cryin'.

• Victor: Get Stoic.

• Thomas: Sometimes it's a good day to die, and sometimes it's a good day to have breakfast.

• Nurse: You guys are like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
  Thomas: We're more like Tonto and Tonto.

• Victor: White people won't respect you if you don't look mean. You have to look like a warrior, like you just got back from killing a buffalo.
  Thomas: But our tribe never hunted buffalo. We were fishermen.
  Victor: What, you want to look like you just caught a fish? This isn't Dances with Salmon, you know!

• Randy Peone: It's a good day to be indigenous!

Ten Little Indians (2003)

• He hated to leave, but he loved his work. He was a man, and men needed to work. More sexism! More masculine tunnel vision! More need for gender-sensitivity workshops!

• He wondered if she would dream about a man who never left her, about some unemployed agoraphobic Indian warrior who liked to wash dishes.

• I don't want long hair, I don't want short hair, I don't want hair at all, and I don't want to be a girl or a boy, I want to be a yellow-orange leaf some little kid picks up and pastes in his scrapbook.

• [Flying into Baltimore after 9/11] I didn't want to see some pacifist, vegan, whole-wheat, free-range, organic, progressive, gray-ponytail, communist, liberal, draft-dodging, NPR-listening wimp! What are they going to do if somebody tries to hijack the plane? Throw a Birkenstock at him? Offer him some pot?...I was hoping for about twenty-five NRA-loving, gun-nut, serial-killing, psychopathic, Ollie North, Norman Schwarzkopf, right-wing, Agent Orange, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, CIA, FBI, automatic-weapon, smart-bomb, laser-sighting bastards!

• Oh, I'm sorry, sir, if I offended you. I am not anti-Semitic. I love all of my brothers and sisters. Jews, Catholics, Buddhists, even the atheists, I love them all. Like you Americans sing, 'Joy to the world and Jeremiah Bullfrog!

• William always scanned the airports and airplanes for little brown guys who reeked of fundamentalism. That meant William was equally afraid of Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell wearing the last vestiges of a summer tan. William himself was a little brown guy, so the other travelers were always sniffing around him, but he smelled only of Dove soap, Mennen deoderant, and sarcasm.