He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.
What kind of life can you have in a house without books?
I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,’ I said. ‘By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.
Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.
And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.
When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
So I heard the boom of my father’s rifle when he shot my best friend. A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.
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.
Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.
Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.
Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don’t want to play.
What if someone picks on me?” I askedThen I’ll pick on them”.What if someone picks my nose?” I asked.The I’ll pick your nose, too” Rowdy said.
(I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. maybe more important than my family.) Can your best friend be more importamt than your family?
The white people always want to fight someone and they always get the dark-skinned people to do the fighting.
But, in the Trump aftermath, I’ve measured the costsAnd benefits of loving those who don’t loveStrangers. 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.
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.
If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.
Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.
What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.
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)
I often wonder why I am the one who remember all the pain?
How much do we remember of what hurts us most? I’ve been thinking about pain, how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now. How each successive pain distorts the preceding.
I was crying because I had broken my best friend’s heart.
I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.
There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.
He was going to punish me now. He couldn’t beat me up with his old man fists, but he could hurt me with his old man words.
It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.
My grandmother’s last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance.
An Indian’s wealth Is determined by what they lose And not by what they save.
I knew I was being an idiot. But I figured if I kept being an idiot, if I didn’t actually accept the truth, then the truth would become false.
You’re always making up stuff from the past,” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.
I’m quite aware of my differences. I wouldn’t classify them as weird
Here’s a fact: Some people want to live moreThan others do.
They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We’re the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.
A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.
If God were good, why would he create Rush Limbaugh?
So Lightning says to Mud,“What would happen if I struck your blood?”And Mud says, “Brother, It would hurt, And make me the motherOf every living thing.But, Fire Boy, you ain’t lifting my grass skirtUntil you burn me a ring.
Sure, we thought the acresThat we tilled were sacred,But how could we have knownThat wheat can haunt like ghosts
Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.Come see the freak named after his deceased father.Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone.
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.
I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That’s right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that’s kind of perverted or maybe it’s just romantic and highly intelligent.
He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
He sang ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood.
Coach said. “the quality of a man’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor”.
I would close my eyes and dream of something strong, dream of horses exploding, rising into the air, their hearts beating survive, survive, survive.
So I guess you were hopelessly romantic and easily distracted, a B-plus mother, certainly good enough to get into Matriarchal State University but not quite good enough for St. Mary’s College of the Blessed Womb Warriors.
Like officer Dave.He’s never said much about his life, but I can tell he’s scarred. And he knows I’m scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.
Junior based all of his decisions on his dreams and visions, which created a lot of problems.
Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against the starvation. We survived because we trusted one another.
More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years.
I learned how to stop crying.I learned how to hide inside of myself.I learned how to be somebody else.I learned how to be cold and numb.
…And nostalgia is a cancer. Nostalgia will fill your heart up with tumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what you are. You’re just an old fart dying of terminal nostalgia.
I didn’t yet know that romantic heroes—famous and not—are usually aimless nomads in disguise.
Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap.
So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.
But how can I get enough experience if they don’t give me a chance to get experience?
But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other.
Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.
I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them.
But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.
son,” Mr. P said. “You’re going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation.
I don’t have to participate in another culture’s ceremonies in order to respect that culture.
My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we’d lie in the same bed, and I’d read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.
When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.
I’m a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it.
My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me – not so much the positive stuff, but the damage.
You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don’t realize it.
My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.