Sherman Alexie

"So Lightning says to Mud,“What would happen if I struck your blood?”And Mud says, “Brother, It would hurt, And make me the mother Of every living thing. But, Fire Boy, you ain’t lifting my grass skirt Until you burn me a ring."

"Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more Than others do."

"Then she tells me that Jesus isstill herebecause Jesus wasonce here. And parts of Jesus arestill floating in the air. She tells me Jesus' DNA ispart of the collective DNA. She tells we are all partof Jesus, we are all Jesus in part. She tells me to breathe deepduring all our stormsbecause you can sometimes taste Jesusin a good, hard rain."

"I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he'd ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex. "Do you believe in God" I asked my father."God has lots of potential," he said."When you pray," I asked him. "What do you pray about"That's none of your business," he said. We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border."

"If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads."

"But, in the Trump aftermath, I've measured the costs And benefits of loving those who don't love Strangers. After all, I'm often the odd one—The strangest stranger—in any field or room."He was weird" will be carved into my tomb."

"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 Dessert Storm because it just made the fat cats get fatter. It was all sugar and whipped cream with a cherry on top. And besides that, you didn't even have to fight in it. All you lost during that was was sleep because you stayed up all night watching CNN."

"Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads."

"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, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed."

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