Top 350 Louise Erdrich Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 7 of 8

301. “We’re from here,” said Thomas. He thought awhile, drank some tea. “Think about this. If we Indians had picked up and gone over there and killed most of you and took over your land, what about that? Say you had a big farm in England. We camp there and kick you off. What do you say?”

— Louise Erdrich

302. “She felt no guilt, and so concluded that if God sent none she would not invent any. She decided to miss Agnes as she would a beloved sister, to make of Father Damien her creation. He would be loving, protective, remote, and immensely disciplined. He would be Agnes’s twin, her masterwork, her brother.”

— Louise Erdrich

303. “The trees were having a last bedtime drink of the great waters that flowed along down there. Like him, before they went to sleep. Beneath that layer of water he sensed beings. They moved so slowly that humans were usually not aware of their existence. But he did feel their movements down in those regions. And yet deeper, far deeper, below those beings, there was the fire of creation, which had been buried at the center of the earth by stars.”

— Louise Erdrich

304. “No. I don’t see,” said Patrice flatly. But she did see. Jack would have tampered with her slightly, just enough so that when somebody else came along she’d have that shame, then more shame, until she got lost in shame and wasn’t herself.”

— Louise Erdrich

305. “You’re forgetting. A people who see themselves primarily as victims are doomed. And we’re not doomed, are we?”

— Louise Erdrich

306. “My dying tree reached toward the sky from its back down on earth. Its branches were like beseeching arms. It takes a while for life to leave green wood. I felt the helplessness, the lack of agency, the frustration of the tree. Severed from its roots, unable to taste the starlight.”

— Louise Erdrich

307. “You can never get enough of the ones you love, thought Thomas, rubbing his chest slowly, to vanquish the pains. “Here I have Biboon with me to this great old age, but I am greedy. I want him longer.”

— Louise Erdrich

308. “Ugh. I stayed up to all hours,’ she said, sliding a book across the floor. Sometimes Jackie resented a perfectly good book because it ‘forced’ her to stay up all night. I was used to this. It was usually a sign of a literary page-turner – whether spy, sea, or horror – my favorite sort of book. She’d made me read Dennis Lehane, Donna Tartt, Stephen Graham Jones, Marcie R. Rendon, Kate Atkinson. She gave me The Death of the Heart and said, ‘It’s extremely good. Keep it.”

— Louise Erdrich

309. “Small bookstores have the romance of doomed intimate spaces about to be erased by unfettered capitalism. A lot of people fall in love here. We’ve even had a few proposals.”

— Louise Erdrich

310. “I heard your looking for your sis. My cousin lives in the Cities. She saw her and wrote to you – with her L hand because she broke her R finger pointing out my faults. That’s Genevieve for you. Watch the mail.”

— Louise Erdrich

311. “The Larks are the sort of people who trot out their relationships with “good Indians,” whom they secretly despise and openly patronize, in order to prove their general love for Indians, whom they are engaged in cheating.”

— Louise Erdrich

312. “So as usual, by getting rid of us, the Indian problem would be solved. Overnight the tribal chairman job had turned into a struggle to remain a problem. To not be solved.”

— Louise Erdrich

313. “Nothing makes Penstemon happier than handing a favorite book to someone who wants to read it. I’m the same. I suppose you could say this delights us although ‘delight’ is a word I rarely use. Delight seems insubstantial; happiness feels more grounded; ecstasy is what I shoot for; satisfaction is hardest to attain.”

— Louise Erdrich

314. “He wondered if he would ever see the inside of one of those houses whose great windows blared sheaves of light. They made huge blurred spears that reached out into the balmy spring darkness.”

— Louise Erdrich

315. “She slept hot just the way her words sometimes blew hot.”

— Louise Erdrich

316. “She loved Hugo with that superb kind of love a mother has for a male child, a love that is deeper and more pure for knowing that he’ll more than likely turn out a fool.”

— Louise Erdrich

317. “The cold sap was a spring tonic. When you drank it, you shared the genius of the woods.”

— Louise Erdrich

318. “Roderick had never had so much company. And they were glad for somebody new. Glad he stayed behind. They argued with him. Why go back there? Who’s waiting for you?”

— Louise Erdrich

319. “I suppose you could say this delights us although ‘delight’ is a word I rarely use. Delight seems insubstantial; happiness feels more grounded; ecstasy is what I shoot for; satisfaction is hardest to attain.”

— Louise Erdrich

320. “This whole book was an excuse to get rid of Indians,” said Thomas.”

— Louise Erdrich

321. “Budgie lay slack-jawed on stained pillows, squinting in perplexity at the stack of plastic containers in one corner. It was like he’d been mildly puzzled to death.”

— Louise Erdrich

322. “The snow had come down in the night, heavily, covering everything. Millie knew the moment she opened her eyes. The air inside was different, filled with a cold radiance. It was a struggle to leave her bed beside the radiator.”

— Louise Erdrich

323. “I reached over and held Pollux’s wide hand as we slowly drove along. There was a slick of rain on the empty, peaceful streets. ‘Why can’t it always be this way?’ I asked Pollux. He gave me an odd look. I turned aside. The empty street swished beneath the tires. Perhaps I should have been ashamed. Why was it that I felt this was the world I’d always waited for?”

— Louise Erdrich

324. “She didn’t use any makeup but lipstick, a bright carmine red that emphasized everything she said.”

— Louise Erdrich

325. “When overcome with laughter, they lost all dignity, however, and choked, snorted, burped, wheezed, even farted, which made them ever more hysterical.”

— Louise Erdrich

326. “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.”

— Louise Erdrich

327. “She died instantly, said Kateri, implying she’d not had time to use a bookmark.”

— Louise Erdrich

328. “He often devised sentences that began with his favorite capitals. Rs and Qs were his art.”

— Louise Erdrich

329. “With the postwar housing boom, the fabulous Klamath and Menominee forests were especially coveted. It is no coincidence that those tribes were among the first five slated for termination.”

— Louise Erdrich

330. “These official men with their satisfied soft faces. He hated their approval just as much as he hated their condescension. And yet this truth was buried so deep inside him that its expression only emerged, in their presence, as a friendly smile.”

— Louise Erdrich

331. “This time, the rapids sent them through a dark tunnel that seemed timeless, blind, malevolent. A yawning throat of water.”

— Louise Erdrich

332. “Betty thought the latch had popped by itself until someone outside said, “Could I have a minute of your time to tell you about the Lord’s plan for your soul?”

— Louise Erdrich

333. “It seemed to Thomas that the stars were drumming in the moonless deep.”

— Louise Erdrich

334. “Why couldn’t he bear down and concentrate? Because he was scared, that’s why.”

— Louise Erdrich

335. “So Patrice continued to ponder her feelings. She wasn’t, as she’d heard in a movie, swept away. But she didn’t want to live her life by movie examples.”

— Louise Erdrich

336. “It was like he’d been mildly puzzled to death.”

— Louise Erdrich

337. “What we’re living through is either unreal or too real.”

— Louise Erdrich

338. “And yet deeper, far deeper, below those beings, there was the fire of creation, which had been buried at the center of the earth by stars.”

— Louise Erdrich

339. “If I stepped off a cliff in that heart of his, he’d catch me. He’d put me back in the sun.”

— Louise Erdrich

340. “She was just glad he hadn’t come back to life, which did make her sad. How sad it was not to be sad.”

— Louise Erdrich

341. “Did he like celery?’ ‘Does anybody?”

— Louise Erdrich

342. “Sometimes I dream I am a man,” said Millie, which was the sort of statement neither of them could meet with a response.”

— Louise Erdrich

343. “I’m still not strictly rational. How could I be? I sell books.”

— Louise Erdrich

344. “As they plodded along, the golden radiance intensified until it seemed to emanate from every feature of the land.”

— Louise Erdrich

345. “It had excited him enormously to be on fire.”

— Louise Erdrich

346. “There are Indian grandmas who get too much church and Indian grandmas where the church doesn’t take, and who are let loose in their old age to shock the young. Zack had one of those last sort.”

— Louise Erdrich

347. “I don’t need another guy whose feelings I have to always worry about. I’m not equipped.”

— Louise Erdrich

348. “They were sitting where Barnes always sat when he drove his boxers home and was asked, inevitably, in for a visit – the table central to eating, cooking, canning, drying, and processing foods, also playing pinochle and cribbage, bathing babies in dishpans, and visiting.”

— Louise Erdrich

349. “She gave him a look that would’ve shaved his face if he had whiskers.”

— Louise Erdrich

350. “With a lot of boiling, you could eat them.”

— Louise Erdrich