Quotes from Louise Erdrich

She didn't use any makeup but lipstick, a bright carmine red that emphasized everything she said.

And so we sat there. Two haunted women. And one unhaunted baby trailing clouds of glory.

These are the decisions that I and many other tribal judges try to make. Solid decisions with no scattershot opinions attached. Everything we do, no matter how trivial, must be crafted keenly. We are trying to build a solid base here for our sovereignty.

It seemed to Thomas that the stars were drumming in the moonless deep.

We try to press against the boundaries of what we are allowed, walk a step past the edge. Our records will be scrutinized by Congress one day and decisions on whether to enlarge our jurisdiction will be made.

Watch out.' 'For what?' said Pollux. 'For when that uniform starts to wear you

And yet deeper, far deeper, below those beings, there was the fire of creation, which had been buried at the center of the earth by stars.

Roderick had never had so much company. And they were glad for somebody new. Glad he stayed behind. They argued with him. Why go back there? Who's waiting for you?

With a lot of boiling, you could eat them.

Government is more like sex than people think. When you are having good sex, you don't appreciate it enough. When you are having bad sex, it is all you can think about.

It was always what my father called the last leg of the journey. But we did not stop this time. We passed over in a sweep of sorrow that would persist into our small forever. We just kept going.

How come we've got these bodies? They are frail supports for what we feel. There are times I get so hemmed in by my arms and legs. I look forward to getting past them. As though death will set me free like a traveling cloud. I'll get past the ragged leaves that dead bum of my youth looked into. I'll be out there as a piece of the endless body of the world feeling pleasures so much larger than skin and bones and blood.

I put her ashes in the Mississippi River not because she ever noticed the river or gave the slightest indication she wanted that, but because it was a way to think of her as she'd always been, wordless and inert, pulled along by a strong, hidden current.

She gave him a look that would have shaved his face if he'd had whiskers.

She was a woman of reserve.

And so when they tell you that I was heartless, a shameless man-chaser, don't ever forget this: I loved what I saw. And yes, it is true that I've done all the things they say. That's not what gets them. What aggravates them is I've never shed one solitary tear. I'm not sorry. That's unnatural. As we all know, a woman is supposed to cry.

My name is Lily Florabella Truax Beaupre, named after the woman who helped my mother, the woman who became my ghost.

Her voice was often heavy with dismissed hope.

Sometimes I dream I am a man," said Millie, which was the sort of statement neither of them could meet with a response.

This whole book was an excuse to get rid of Indians," said Thomas.

Eau de Better Than Manure," said Doris. "The farm girl's friend.

My father had bought an ugly new clock, and it was ticking again in the quiet kitchen.

They were sitting where Barnes always sat when he drove his boxers home and was asked, inevitably, in for a visit—the table central to eating, cooking, canning, drying, and processing foods, also playing pinochle and cribbage, bathing babies in dishpans, and visiting.

all of us invisible and as if we never were here, from the beginning, here.