Quotes from Louise Erdrich

yes. But within a month of enduring this great thirst

Something new was at work, she could feel it, an ease with her own mind she'd never felt before, a pleasure in her own wit she'd half hidden or demurred. As Agnes, she'd always felt too inhibited to closely question men. Questions from women to men always raised questions of a different nature. As a man, she found that Father Damien was free to pursue all questions with frankness and ease.

Small bookstores have the romance of doomed intimate spaces about to be erased by unfettered capitalism. A lot of people fall in love here. We've even had a

Idolatrous frenzy, Is that something like traditional religion? asks Bangs. Yeah it is, says Sweetie. I'm a pagan Catholic. Moving on?

Things will improve when we start living on the top of the earth, on wind and light.

Still what? I made my voice grating and sarcastic. I was never like so many Indian boys, who'd look down quiet in their anger and say nothing. My mother had taught me different.

But a quick-acting poison, that's different. It strikes with blind swiftness. You can be bit by temptation anytime. It is a thought, a direction, a noise in your brain, a hunch, an intuition that leads you to darker places than you've ever imagined. I

Her outfit must have penetrated his unconscious. She wore a shirt of softly fringed suede that clung to her breasts like an unforgiven sin.

Love - which the young expect, the middle-aged fear or wrestle with or find unbearable or clutch to death- those content in their age, finally, cherish with pained gratitude.

She has decided to appear to nobody but the feckless.

I'd been a snowflake. Without my specialness, I melted," she says.

I tried to get away from him, to get to that door, but instead I backed up against the wall and was stuck there in that white, white room.

there was no place as unknown as grief.

Some Rules to Assist in My Transformation Make requests in the form of orders. Give compliments in the form of concessions. Ask questions in the form of statements. Exercises to enhance the muscles of the neck? Admire women's handiwork with copious amazement. Stride, swing arms, stop abruptly, stroke chin. Sharpen razor daily. Advance no explanations. Accept no explanations. Hum an occasional resolute march.

Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haine Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai Sailboat

No matter what they died to me, it would still be a 'life sentence' to be a white woman in the rong skin. sentenced to be white was my fate.

because it costs a lot to not be aware.

As with most other reservations, the government policy of attempting to excite pride in private ownership by doling parcels of land to individual Ojibwe flopped miserably and provided a feast of acquisition for hopeful farmers and surrounding entrepreneurs.

In the convent, she'd been taught to walk with eyes downcast. Now, Father Damien tipped his chin out and narrowed his gaze, focused straight ahead.

For the past year, Pollux has been perfecting my favorite soup of those that saved me—it is a corn soup. First he caramelizes fresh-cut sweetcorn, toasting it slowly in a heavy pan, adding onions. Then cubed potatoes tossed lightly in butter, to set a crisp. He adds all of this to a garlicky chicken broth with shaved carrots, cannellini beans, fresh dill, parsley, a dash of cayenne, and heavy cream. The scent was making me delirious. Still.

When my feelings were too much for me I used to wrap myself in blankets and lie in my closet waiting for the feelings to pass. At one point, I decided to become a person who didn't feel so much. I stand by that decision, though it didn't work.

Sternly, he nodded up and down when he listened instead of tipping his head to the side. Between these two, where was the real self? It came to her that both Sister Cecilia and then Agnes were as heavily manufactured of gesture and pose as was Father Damien. And within this, what sifting of identity was she? What mote? What nothing?

The world of grass was never meant to be shortened to a carpet so that the outdoors is like one big wall-to-wall room.

When Thomas thought of his father peace stole across his chest and covered him like sunlight.