"I was carrying the burden of my race, you know? I was going to get a bad back from it." pg. 43
"I don't know if hope is white. But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature." pg. 50
"There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away." pg. 107
"What was my secret? I looked and talked and dreamed and walked differently than everybody else. I was new." pg. 110
"We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly." pg. 112
"Of course, I was a sweaty mess... but it didn't matter. Penelope thought I was beautiful and so I felt beautiful." pg. 122
"If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing." pg. 129
[After telling his dad "it's okay," after he left them to get drunk over Christmas] "But it wasn't okay. It was about as far from okay as you can get. If okay was the earth, then I was standing on Jupiter. I don't know why I said it was okay. For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart yet again... It was a beautiful and ugly thing." pg. 151
"And I realized that, sure, Indians were drunk and sad and displaced and crazy and mean, but, dang, we knew how to laugh." pg. 166
"We Indians have LOST EVERYTHING. We lost our native land, we lost our languages, we lsot our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost." pg. 173
"Yep, my daddy was an undependable drunk. But he'd never missed any of my organized games, concerts, plays, or picnics. He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could." pg. 189
"All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them." pg. 212
"In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly." pg. 216
"I cried because so many of my fellow tribe members were slowly killing themselves and I wanted them to live. I wanted them to get strong and get sober and get the hell of the rez...I wept because I was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez. I was the only one with enough arrogance." pg. 216&217
(All quotes taken from the 2007 hardback publication of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)