The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

have to prove that I am stronger than everybody else. I have to prove that I will never give up. I will never quit playing hard. And I don’t just mean in basketball. I’m never going to quit living life this hard, you know? I’m never going to surrender to anybody. Never, ever, ever.”

“No, I like this other one more,” Coa

, I like this other one more,” 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.”

"Well," she said, "how can I be sure there aren't invisible people in the world? Scientists didn't believe in the mountain gorilla for hundreds of years. And now look. So if scientists can be wrong, then all of us can be wrong. I mean, what if all of those invisible people ARE scientists?

Think about that one."

Adults are so good at smiling mysteriously. Do they go to

college for that?

"It's not like anybody's going to notice if you go away," he said. "So you might as well gut it out."

A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that

My mom was curled into a ball on the couch. There were, like, twenty-five or thirty
cousins there, eating all of our food.
Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.

My teammates told me later that I was grinning like an idiot as I flew down the court.

Gordy gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians. And he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reason: the fricking booze.