Quotes from William Kent Krueger

Waiting for the warm affection of another human heart. Waiting to know the reason he has always felt like a soul alone in the universe. But this night, his waiting

The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. —BLAISE PASCAL

FROM THE HEIGHT of a certain wisdom acquired across many decades, I look down now on those four children traveling a meandering river whose end was unknown to them.

When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what's left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he's led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What's left to us when that which we love most has been taken?

She gave Mother Beal a look I couldn't, at that age, interpret but I have since come to think of as profound maternal compassion, a strength emanating from a deep well of endurance that, across my life, I've come understand was not particular to Sarah Schofield. I've witnessed it in other women who have suffered much without losing their hope or their gift for embracing with forgiveness those who are broken.

You tell stories but they're real. There are monsters and they eat the hearts of children.

Death is no surprise to an old man like me. Being able to take a regular crap, now, there is a surprise.

there would be no sign that Molly Nurmi had ever been. In the time before the cold science of the whites came to Iron Lake, the Anishinaabe believed the water was bottomless. There was a tradition among the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Before they were married, a couple would take strands of their hair and braid a cord. On the day they were wed, they tied the cord around a stone, canoed to the middle of the lake, and dropped the stone into the water. The stone descended forever, they believed

I've learned across the whole of my life is that it's only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.

Quello che voglio dire, Odie, è che nessuno nasce cattivo. La vita ti deforma in maniera terribile.

laws are made by human beings and human beings are not infallible. We make laws for all kinds of reasons, and not always the right ones. One of the most powerful motivations for the enactment of legislation is fear, and when you act out of fear, you risk becoming exactly the kind of monster you're trying to bar the door against. I

close behind him and listened in on their conversation.

Non c'è fine alla crudeltà in questo mondo, e non importa quanto si precipiti in basso, non c'è mai fondo. Ma tu hai una cosa bella in te, Mose. Sei un sioux. Nelle tue vene scorre sangue buono e nobile. Non permettere a nessuno di dirti il contrario.

Sono giunto alla conclusione che siamo creature fatte di spirito, uno spirito che scorre dentro di noi come l'elettricità e può passare dall'uno all'altro. Fu questo ciò che senti scaturire dalla mano di mia madre, lo spirito del suo profondo anelito.

I'm just saying, Odie, that nobody's born mean. Life warps you in terrible ways.

I could hear the pop of bed linen snapping in the wind.

President Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but thirty-nine, who'd been found guilty of the most egregious acts.

Standing in that simple cabin in the middle of nowhere, his hand in the grip of the oldest man he had ever seen, Bo realized that he was in the presence of someone whose power was of a remarkably different kind.

I'd considered loss only from my own perspective and Albert's and Mose's and Emmy's, because our parents had been taken from us. But it worked the other way, too. Losing a child, that had to be akin to losing a good part of your heart.

A morel, tastiest mushroom there is. Been a long while since I went hunting morels. Here," he said to me. "Take this and go see if you can find any more along the river.

Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks.

In the beginning of the journey of this child, or any child, is the understanding that each foot will fall into a different track. Happiness on one side, sadness on the other. Pleasure and pain. Wisdom and folly. With each step, this child will learn that there is in him the possibility of great good and also great evil. It is a serious matter, guiding this child along the path of right living.

There is something about a fire on a dark night, a fire shared with others, that pulls the gloom right out of you. We sat around the cheery little blaze with the branches popping as they burned with the flames dancing, and although we hadn't eaten that day, I could feel our spirits rise along with the smoke that drifted toward the stars.

day, and we thank you for life and for all things. You are our mother. You feed us, you clothe us, you shelter us, and you comfort us. For this we thank you and honor you.