Quotes from Louise Erdrich

When I moved to Minnesota, I found there was a thriving and determined movement, a grassroots movement, to revitalize the Ojibwe language. And I've never come to be a competent speaker. I have to say that right now. But even learning the amount of Ojibwe that one can at my age is a life-altering experience.

There is a legacy of violence against native women that has gotten worse and worse over time.

You know, some people fall right through the hole in their lives. Its invisible, but they come to it after time, never knowing where.

Time was rushing around me like water around a big wet rock. The only difference is, I was not so durable as stones. Very quickly I would be smoothed away.

They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.

Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size.

I spend most of my time writing.

I spend my time dwelling on revenge and try to deal with the monsters crawling out of the ashes.

To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.

What is this life but the sound of an appalling love.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.

Love. The black hook. The spear singing through the mind.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, the place to love and be irritated with.

On any state elections map, the reservations are blue places. Native people are most often progressives, Democrats, and by no means gun-toting vigilantes.

There are several kinds of land on reservations. And all of these pieces of land have different entities who are in charge of enforcing laws on this land.

Most writers have been influenced by Faulkner.

I have never fully exorcised shames that struck me to the heart as a child except through written violence, shadowy caricature, and dark jokes.

Revenge is a sorrow for the person who has to take it on. And the person who is rash enough to think it's going to help a situation is always wrong.

The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.

Veils of love which was only hate petrified by longing--that was me.

My father is my biggest literary influence. Recently, I've been looking through his letters. He was in the National Guard when I was a child, and whenever he left, he would write to me. He wrote letters to me all through college, and we still correspond. His letters, and my mother's, are one of my life's treasures.

They're all the same-- the cop, the criminal, the defense, the prosecutor-- they all share a fundamental belief in the malleability of truth

My grandfather was a persuasive man who made friends with people at every level of influence. In order to fight against our tribe's termination, he went to newspapers and politicians and urged them to advocate for our tribe in Washington. He also supported his family through the Depression as a truck farmer.

I don't pray. When I was young, I vowed I never would be caught begging God. If I want something I get it for myself. I go to church only to show the old hens they don't get me down.