Quotes from Louise Erdrich

I was the sort of kid who spent a Sunday afternoon prying little trees out of the foundation of his parents' house. I should have given in to the inevitable truth that this was the sort of person I would become, in the end, but I kept fighting it.

Add there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles in the car had bent them, dulled their eyes, even grayed and whitened their hair and caused their hands and voices to tremble. At the same time, I found, as I rose form the chair, I'd gotten old along with them.

Only when you are secure enough not to fear immediate survival can you display creative intelligence in anything you do.

Blue Juneberry, tough diamond willow.

Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters.

There was the unspeakable neatness of military preparation for violence

As animals subject to the laws of earth, we think time is experience. But time is more a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element.

Higher Power makes promises we all know they can't back up, but anybody ever go and slap an old malpractice suit on God? Or the U.S. government? No they don't. Faith might be stupid, but it gets us through.

The people stared through her as though she were invisible until she thought she was, and walked more easily then, just a cloud reflected in a stream.

Ever since I understood this life was to be mine, I have wanted only for it to continue in its precious routine.

What I'm trying to say is that a certain sentence of the book—a written sentence, a very powerful sentence—killed Flora.' Louise was silent. After a few moments she spoke. 'I wish I could write a sentence like that.

He said that while Clemence adored the sacrament, he meditated on how it could be possible that humans had evolved out of apes only to sit gaping at a round white cracker.

I want to see the story. More than anything, I am frustrated by the fact that I'll never know how things turn out.

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge; no fact can deflect their point of view.

His thoughts swam between us, hidden under rocks, disappearing in weeds, and I was fishing for them, dangling my own words like baits and lures.

Delphine witnessed awful things occurring to other humans. Worse than that, she was powerless to alter their fate. It would be that way all her life--disasters, falling like chairs all around her, falling so close they disarranged her hair, but not touching her.

The worst kind of loneliness gripped him. The kind you feel alongside another person.

How the flowers were fired and colored into the design. Perhaps this sort of gesture will be lost, perhaps it is a function of consciousness that we don't need in order to survive. Perhaps this piece of evolution makes no sense—our hunger for everyday sorts of visual pleasure—but I don't think so. I think we have survived because we love beauty and because we find each other beautiful. I think it may be our strongest quality.

They both started laughing in that desperate high-pitched way people laugh when their hearts are broken.

I relax into a black unconsciousness. I dive in, submerse, and breathe oblivion, my favorite element.

The services that the government provides to Indians might be likened to rent. The rent for use of the entire country of the United States.

Funny how often the Will of God puts a dollar in a pocket, said Dr. Ames.

The average man is proof the average woman can take a joke," he said.

While their moral standards for the rest of the world were rigid, they were always able to find excuses for their own shortcomings. It is these people really, said my father, small-time hypocrites, who may in special cases be capable of monstrous acts if given the chance.