Quotes from William Kent Krueger

I believe no one belongs to anyone else. You, me, Waaboozoons, we are all dust borrowed for a little while from Grandmother Earth. And even that dust does not belong to her. She has borrowed it from all creation, which is the Great Mystery, whih is Kitchimanidoo. And if you ask this old man, I would say that another way to think about Kitchimanidoo is as a great gift. Kitchimanidoo is not about keeping. Nothing belongs to anyone. All of creation is meant as a giving.

Love is the only river I know whose current flows both ways.

Every heart wants to find peace. In the end, that is the place the Creator takes us.

They're never far from us, you know. ... The dead. No more'n a breath. You let the last one go and you're with them again.

But intentions could be like cloud animals in the sky, so clear for a while, then shifting, then fading, then gone.

The sound of his deep sobs was enough to make a stone weep. It's impossible to witness such open grief and not feel pity wrung from your heart... I couldn't recall ever hearing a grown man cry this way. It made me think that no matter how big we grew or how old, there was always a child in us somewhere.

Every life lived fully is going to have some regrets, because every risk is not worth taking, but you don't always see that in time. Or if you do, you convince yourself that you'll be the one to beat the odds.

preferred the more informal service of the Methodists to the religious rigor of the Lutherans, who were as ubiquitous in Minnesota as ragweed.

what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time. Better, I think, to wish for her wisdom, a virtue not so fickle.

returning to the Brandt home but I agreed to give a hand. We arrived after lunch and found Lise at work loading a wheelbarrow with the smaller stones from the huge pile beside the shed. The flower bed itself was in the middle of the yard, positioned in a sunny area between deep pools of shade that lay beneath a couple of tall hackberry trees.

I don't mind dying; I just don't want you to die.

Whatever cracks were already there the war forced apart, and what we might otherwise have kept inside came spilling out.

my mother heated Campbell's tomato soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta and we ate dinner and afterward watched Have Gun—Will Travel.

she was used to dealing with worry by sinking herself completely into the facts of a situation. Her strength lay in her ability to scrutinize circumstances from every angle and to anticipate the moves of an opponent. But she didn't have facts and she didn't know her opponent, and all she was left with was the worry.

Me, I was growing up scrambling for meaning and I was full of confusion and fear.

down. He realized he hadn't taken a single sip.

Everything that's been done to us we carry forever. Most of us do our damnedest to hold on to the good and forget the rest. But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can't or won't touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams. Wake

At the heart of most things that look bad is something that can be good and useful.

Which turned out to be a thing I couldn't do. Not because imagination failed me, but because I was afraid to dream in that way. In my whole life, I could recall no dream ever coming true.

The head and the heart, you know, they don't always see eye to eye.

HISTORY, IN CORK'S OPINION, was a useless discipline, an assemblage of accounts and memories, often flawed, that in the end did the world no service. Math and science could be applied in concrete ways. Literature, if it didn't enlighten, at least entertained. But history? History was simply a study in futility. Because people never learned.

Spirit and purpose in all things. For all creation, respect.

Everything that's been done to us we carry forever. Most of us do our damnedest to hold on to the good and forget the rest. But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can't or won't touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams.

The land is what it is. Life is what it is. God is what God is. You and me, we're what we are. None of it's perfect. Or, hell, maybe it all is and we're just not wise enough to see it." "Those orchard trees were in pretty bad