Arnold Spirit Jr. Quotes

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.”

“I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life . . . So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside.”

“I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. Maybe more important than my family. Can your best friend be more important than your family?”

“You’ve been fighting since you were born . . . You fought off that brain surgery. You fought off those seizures . . . You kept your hope. And now, you have to take your hope and go somewhere where other people have hope.”

“Ok, so maybe my white teammates had problems, serious problems, but none of their problems was life threatening . . . But I looked over at the Wellpinit Redskins, at Rowdy . . . I knew that two or three of those Indians might not have eaten breakfast that morning.”

“I’d always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole – I wasn’t expected to be good so I wasn’t. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good . . . And so I became good.”

“Well, life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.”

“He doesn’t believe in physical punishment; he believes in staring so cold at me that I turn into a ice-covered ice cube with an icy filling.”

“If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning . . . But when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it.”

“I draw because words are two unpredictable . . . I draw because words are too limited.”

“But I can’t blame my parents for our poverty because my mother and father are the twin suns around which I orbit and my world would EXPLODE without them.”

“You have to read a book three times before you know it. The first time you read it for the story. The plot. The movement from scene to scene that gives the book its momentum, its rhythm.”

“Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.”

“And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That’s the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change.”

“I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”

“I know, I know, but some Indians think you have to act white to make your life better. Some Indians think you become white if you try to make your life better, if you become successful.”

“I love Indians. I love our songs, your dances, and your souls. And I love your art.”

“I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other . . . It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn’t pay well at all.”

“Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”