Quotes from Louise Erdrich

Once in a while I encounter that oblivion in the form of an unreal me. This unreal me is paralyzed by one bottomless thought: I didn't choose this format. I didn't choose to be organized into a Tookie. What, or who, made that happen? Why? What will happen if I do not accept this outrage? It isn't easy to stay organized in this shape. I can feel what it would be like to stop making the effort.

When I creep into our bed, there is the joy and relief of a person entering a secret dimension. Here, I shall be useless. The world can go on without me. Here I shall be held by love. Still, quite often

Father Damien maintained a neutral, kind, meditative watchfulness that had in it no hint of impatience.

It was Sister Hildegarde's belief that good penmanship was the defining key to success in life. That and hygiene—but though the hygiene just had to be adequate, the writing had to be exquisite.

Mystery is not a passive condition. To see a thing so perfectly what it is-- doesn't it make you want to hold it, to marvel, to touch, its answered question?

in order to protect our human freedom, God doesn't often, very often at least, intervene. God can't do that without taking away our moral freedom. Do you see? No. But yeah. The only thing that God can do, and does all of the time, is to draw good from any evil situation. I

86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted.

Bernadette thought she could trust young Nector Kashpaw because he'd been exposed to the withering light of the government school.

It reminded me of what Pollux said once about owls. That when you are approached by an owl, when you don't seek it out but it flies to you or perches on your fence, say, the owl is telling you to prepare yourself. Prepare yourself for what? That sort of warning can drive you crazy. Impossible to know how to avoid something when you don't know what it is.

Why were they talking all at once? Omakayas wondered. Nokomis thought for a while. I think they talk to each other all the time, she said, but our minds are not always peaceful enough to hear them.

The Death of the Heart

Her loneliness sometimes seemed a thing not of this world, but a loneliness only that mysterious being, solitary and unique, could understand.

Father Travis wore cassocks most of the time because he liked the convenience. He could put them on over T-shirts and work pants. The old people liked to see him in one, and after The Matrix the young people liked it too.

Sure, it's not good for you, but Asema says it's grandma food, 'bad for the arteries but good for the heart.

When it really turned cold, I caught the disease of unfixed dread. I was weary, bedraggled, and my brain had stalled

Neither life, nor angels, nor principalities nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor any other creature will separate you.

Slowly and inevitably, she fell in love with each person in the family, only she didn't know what to call it. She simply found herself related.

At last, the pure and fragile snow was falling upon us, separating off the air from the dirt, the living from the dead, the reader from the book.

the reflective isolation of this year

Their love for him, in return, pained him and soothed him. He was thrilled and touched with sadness, he was hungry, and he was practical. He was lonely; he was a priest.

Books. Why? So I can talk to other humans without having to meet them. Fear of boredom. So what I will never be alone.

So who was doing the beating? The uniforms or those inside them? How was it that protests against police violence showed how violent police really were?

So you see, once a person drops the scales of prejudiced certainty and doubts appear, there is no telling how far a heart can open.

She was as sturdily made as a captain's chair, yet drew water with graceful wrists and ran dancing across the rutted road on curved white ankles.