Quotes from William Kent Krueger

Eddie now?" Larson asked. "Maybe she waited until

If you throw yourself onto the fire of guilt, it will be a useless sacrifice. We do not know, any of us, the Great Mystery's purpose in this. But purpose there is.

What does she see in him?' Cork asked. 'He looks like a burned matchstick.

With every turn of the river since I'd left Lincoln School, the world had become broader, its mysteries more complex, its possibilities infinite.

In all my life I've learned two things." He pointed to the black patch over his eye. "One is never call a small man in a uniform 'Shorty.' The other is that nothing is ever hopeless.

the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice. "I invite you, my brothers and sisters, to rejoice with me in the divine grace of the Lord and in the beauty of this morning, which he has given us." My father's eyes swept over the congregants who filled the pews silent as dandelions with upturned faces. He smiled and said, "Amen.

the good smell of wood smoke, a scent comforting and welcoming, the essence, it had always seemed to me, of where the human experience and the wilderness met.

He looked like a man who'd invited himself to dinner only to discover that the special of the day was a plateful of shit.

antimacassars and pot holders. There were games with prizes

But I know you, brother. And I know you got all the substance of a soap bubble.

Smells are the time machines of human perception. A scent can take you instantly back to a particular place and time.

It seems to me that when you look back at a life - yours or another's - what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall of that last summer in New Bremen is a construct of both what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see.

everything he was looking at was about to change. Change was the destiny of all things, living or not. The best anyone could hope for was to have strong hand in shaping what came next.

In every human being there are two wolves constantly battling. One is love and the other is fear. The wolf that wins the battle is the one you feed. Always the one you feed.

Information is power," she continued. "Any organization with power and that operates under a cloak of secrecy and darkness becomes a breeding ground for monstrous abuse, no matter how good-intentioned the goals are initially.

How do you say goodbye when your heart is telling you how horribly wrong that would be? How do you let go when everything inside you is screaming to hold on?

One kind thing is the seed from which a great goodness grows. It is not hope we hold to, Niece. It is belief in the power of that growing goodness.

Why don't the spirits just tell us things, Henry? How come they make it so hard? The old man laughed. I think it is like this. The spirits shoot an arrow. It is past us before we can see it clearly. But if we follow, eventually we come to the place where it has lodged. And we realize the arrow is not important. What is important is the place it has guided us to.

she couldn't help wondering what became of human beings who lived too long without beauty.

Grandfather, sacred one, Teach us love, compassion, and honor, That we may heal the earth And heal one another.

What is a soul? I believe it is our connection with the Creator and our deep awareness of our connection with all things created by him.

The wind blew snow off the cliff so that it drifted down around him like sparkling magic powder. In the moonlight, he cast a huge shadow on the ice. Cork saw the old man suddenly in a kind of vision, as if beholding in the long black shadow the real Meloux, a great hunter spirit, silent and powerful. Cork was very grateful to have the old man on his side.

The snowmobiles were out in force on Iron Lake, zipping about the ice like ants frenzying on a frosted cake. In summer it was motorboats and Jet Skis and sailboats. No matter what the season the lake had little peace.

When darkness comes over your soul, it doesn't come in light shades; it descends with all the black of a moonless night. In the faces of the women around that cook fire, what I saw was the vacant look of abandonment, and I knew it was all my fault.