Quotes from Louise Erdrich

to poison his spirit, drowned it methodically, savagely, choked it off. Alcohol had been the tool. He thought back to when he took the first drink of his first real dirty drunk and remembered how he'd wept into the amber flame deep in the cup and how his sorrow had been answered with a spreading warmth and a forgetting.

Dad had finally allowed Cappy to come over that day. It was a grueling hot afternoon so we were inside playing Bionic Commando, quietly as we could, with the fan on. As always, my mother was sleeping. There was a soft tap. I answered the door, and there was Linda Wishkob, her bulging eyes, her tight blue uniform, her sweaty, dull, makeup-less face. Those long fingernails on the stubby fingers suddenly struck me as sinister, though they were painted an innocent pink

I wondered if this was a thing regular mothers felt looking at their daughters from a distance, finding them perilous in their magnetic beauty, which makes no distinction in which screws and nuts it attracts.

But now he was losing confidence and control. His paintings were hiding from him because Irene was hiding something.

Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendhal Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy

Walking is a feat of controlled falling. Like life, I guess.

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

Our history marks us. Sometimes I think our state's beginning years haunt everything: the city's attempts to graft progressive ideas onto its racist origins, the fact that we can't undo history but are forced to either confront or repeat it.

I do my work. I do my best to make the small decisions well, and I try not to hunger for the great things, for the deeper explanations. For I am sentenced to keep watch over this small patch of earth, to judge its miseries and tell its stories. That's who I am.

It thrills me when a young person such as yourself speaks of dust issues!

There was still blood going down Henry's chin, but he didn't notice it and no one said anything, even though every time he took a bite of his bread his blood fell onto it until he was eating his own blood mixed in with the food.

As I feel into a darker sleep, I understood that I had learned something. Now that I knew fear, I also knew that it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.

What is the difference between the influence of instinct upon a wolf and history upon a man? In both cases, justice is prey to unknown dreams.

But in the despair of routine any aberration is a radiant signal.

Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

Bad smells made her angry, they were a personal affront.

The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A.

You probably fucked a priest and now your baby's going to be a monkey. And it won't get born with a silver spoon in its mouth, it'll be wearing a little black and white collar like so- Little Mary jumps up and begins to dance around making hooh-hooh monkey sounds and putting her fingers to her neck. She's talented. She like the dark side, the devil version of her supersmart dad, Eddy.

The world halted. There sounded a great gong made of sky. A gasp. Silence.

A feeling. He wasn't one for giving names to things. Or finding their basis. His feelings were like weather. He just suffered or enjoyed them.

Many books and movies had in their plots some echoes of my secret experiences with Flora. Places haunted by unquiet Indians were standard. Hotels were disturbed by Indians whose bones lay underneath the basements and floors -- a neat psychic excavation of American unease with its brutal history.

The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

Our love is a hurting delicacy, an old killer whiskey, a curse, and too beautiful for words.

Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah Beloved, by Toni Morrison The Through, by A. Rafael Johnson Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders Savage Conversations, by LeAnne Howe The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth Songs for Discharming, by Denise Sweet Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, by Gerald Vizenor