Louise Erdrich Quotes

Spent, she thought that there was no place as unknown as grief. (p38)

I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I want her in a new way, a way she's never been told about.

As Delphine watched, into her head there popped a strange notion: the idea that perhaps strongly experienced moments, as when Eva turned and the sun met her hair and for that one instant the symbol blazed out, those particular moments were eternal. Those moments actually went somewhere. Into a file of moments that existed out of time's range and could not be pilfered by God.

a mother is a frayed net, you know. We stretch ourselves over everything we can. But there’s holes all over the place where things get through and we do everything we can and fathers and—you know, as parents, we try so hard. But we can’t do it all. We can’t completely protect. I think in a very odd sense, I want things to be in ordinary for my children, routine. I want things to be simple, you know, for them to cope with. But that’s not what the world is like. And that’s not even what they want. They want to grow. They want to grow in every way that they possibly can and that’s going to involve pain.

She gave her husband such a night of sexual pleasure that his eyes followed her constantly after that, narrow and hot. He grew molten when she passed near other men, and at night they made their own shaking tent. They got teased too much and moved farther off, into the brush, into the nesting ground of shy and holy loons. There, no one could hear them. In solitude they made love until they became gaunt and hungry, pale windigos with aching eyes, tongues of flame.

The self will not be forced under, nor will the baby's needs gracefully retreat. The world tips away when we look into our children's faces. (p4)

"Everything that ever happened to him in his life," she said, "all the things we said and did. Where did it go?" I didn't have an answer, so I just drove. Once I had caused a miracle by smashing my face on ice, but now I was an ordinary person. In the few miles we had left I could not help drawing out [her] strange idea in my mind. In my line of work I've seen thousands of brains that belonged to sheep, pork, steers. They were all gray lumps like ours. Where did everything go? What was really inside? The flat fields unfolded, the shallow ditches ran beside the road. I felt the live thoughts hum inside of me, and I pictured tiny bees, insects made of blue electricity, in a colony so fragile that it would scatter at the slightest touch. I imagined a blow, like a mallet to the sheep, or a stroke, and I saw the whole swarm vibrating out. Who could stop them? Who could catch them in their hands? (p203-4)

Life seems to flood by, taking our loves quickly in its flow. In the growth of children, in the aging of beloved parents, time's chart is magnified, shown in its particularity, focused, so that with each celebration of maturity there is also a pang of loss. This is our human problem, one common to parents, sons and daughters, too - how to let go while holding tight, how to simultaneously cherish the closeness and intricacy of the bond while at the same time letting out the raveling string, the red yarn that ties our hearts.

I’ve come to love the traditional Ojibwe ceremonies, and some rituals, but I hate religious rules. They are usually about controlling women. On Sundays when other people go to wood-and-stone churches, I like to take my daughters into the woods. Or at least work in the garden and be outside. Any god we have is out there. I’d hate to be certain that there was nothing. When it comes to God, I cherish doubt.

Slowly and inevitably, she fell in love with each person in the family, only she didn’t know what to call it. She simply found herself related. (p184)

All of the books will be connected somehow—by history and blood and by something I have no control over, which is the writing itself. The writing is going to connect where it wants to, and I will have to try and follow along.

This is how the world ends, I think, everything crazy yet people doing normal things.

I knew each person's delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.

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.

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.