Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size.

— Louise Erdrich

Things which do not grow and change are dead things.

— Louise Erdrich

Columbus only discovered that he was in some new place. He didn't discover America.

— Louise Erdrich

“He was not all good, would never be; yet there were slender threads of okay.”

— Louise Erdrich

The world tips away when we look into our children's faces.

— Louise Erdrich

There are ways of being abandoned even when your parents are right there.

— Louise Erdrich

The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of revisions to family history.

— Louise Erdrich

I think one of the reasons to be here on earth is to finally be who we are, at all times -…

— Louise Erdrich

I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I…

— Louise Erdrich

“It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of…

— Louise Erdrich

“The Creator made us for each other. Me here. Zelia there. Space was put between us by human error. But our hearts…

— Louise Erdrich

“don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick,…

— Louise Erdrich

...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as humble as the spider's, what is beautiful that I…

— Louise Erdrich

To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see…

— Louise Erdrich

Revenge is a sorrow for the person who has to take it on. And the person who is rash enough to think…

— Louise Erdrich

The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put…

— Louise Erdrich

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to…

— Louise Erdrich

I grew up in North Dakota around Dakota and Ojibwe people, and also small-town people in Wahpeton. Writers make few choices, really,…

— Louise Erdrich

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with…

— Louise Erdrich

“The habits of Franciscan nuns still shrouded all but their faces, and so each of the new nun's features were emphasized, read…

— Louise Erdrich

As soon as there's a crisis, there are people who take charge and want to control others. Climate-change catastrophe and human migration…

— Louise Erdrich

Add there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles…

— Louise Erdrich

By the time I was done with the car it looked worse than any typical Indian car that has been driven all…

— Louise Erdrich

“She slowly became convinced…that at the center of the universe not God but a tremendous deadness reigned. The stillness of a drunk…

— Louise Erdrich

“Eva sipped her coffee. Today, her hair was bound back in a singular knot, the sides rolled in smooth twists, the knot…

— Louise Erdrich

“The music was more than music- at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected…

— Louise Erdrich

We have these earthly bodies. We don't know what they want. Half the time, we pretend they are under our mental thumb,…

— Louise Erdrich

“The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in…

— Louise Erdrich

“When she shut her eyes, her mind grew alert. Her senses opened. All around her, she felt how quickly things formed and…

— Louise Erdrich

“Wherever the family was, these two dogs, both six-year-old shepherd mixes, took up their posts at the central coming-and-going point. Gil called…

— Louise Erdrich

“For as I am standing there I look closer into the grandstand and see that there is someone waiting. It is my…

— Louise Erdrich

There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.

— Louise Erdrich

There is a legacy of violence against native women that has gotten worse and worse over time.

— Louise Erdrich

I prefer to have some beliefs that don't make logical sense.

— Louise Erdrich

“Getting out of bed, out of a chair, changing her position, was like moving furniture.”

— Louise Erdrich

“Very little is needed to make a happy life, he said.”

— Louise Erdrich

Money helps, though not so much as you think when you don't have it.

— Louise Erdrich

“Bad smells made her angry, they were a personal affront.”

— Louise Erdrich

The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.

— Louise Erdrich