Quote

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.

Sherman Alexie

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sherman Alexie
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: October 7
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Wellpinit
Washington
Sherman Joseph Alexie
Jr.
Pretty
Comes
Death
Thing
Much
Laughter
Tears

More quotes by Sherman Alexie

Image
Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.
Sherman Alexie
Image
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.
Sherman Alexie
Image
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)
Sherman Alexie
Image
The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.
Sherman Alexie
Image
If it's fiction, then it better be true.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Books and beer are the best and worst defense.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.
Sherman Alexie
Image
All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new.
Sherman Alexie
Image
In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your epicness. But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is.
Sherman Alexie
Image
In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.
Sherman Alexie
Image
...there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them... ~ Thomas Builds-the-Fire (played by Evan Adams) in Alexie's Smoke Signals
Sherman Alexie
Image
I look more Indian when I'm serious.
Sherman Alexie
Image
He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.
Sherman Alexie
Image
I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.
Sherman Alexie
Image
I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.
Sherman Alexie
Image
A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.
Sherman Alexie
Image
And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.
Sherman Alexie
Image
Spiritual matters should be private.
Sherman Alexie
Image
[F]rank knew he was guilty of arrogance and misanthropy, but he compensated by being kind to strangers and tipping really well at restaurants.
Sherman Alexie