Top 350 Louise Erdrich Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “And so we sat there. Two haunted women. And one unhaunted baby trailing clouds of glory.”

— Louise Erdrich

302. “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

303. “The world can go on without me. Here I shall be held by love.”

— Louise Erdrich

304. “It was the kind of moment, I see now, that could have gone several ways. She could have laughed, she could have cried, she could have reached for him. Or he could have got down on his knees and pretended to have the heart attack that later killed him. She would have been jolted from her shock. Helped him. We would have cleared up the mess, made sandwiches for ourselves, and things would have gone on. If we’d sat down together that night, I do believe things would have gone on.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

306. “I still had Grandma’s hankie in my pocket. The sun flared. I’d heard that this river was the last of an ancient ocean, miles deep, that once had covered the Dakotas and solved all our problems. It was easy to still imagine us beneath them vast unreasonable waves, but the truth is we live on dry land. I got inside. The morning was clear. A good road led on. So there was nothing to do but cross the water and bring her home.”

— Louise Erdrich

307. “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

308. “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

309. “Delight seems insubstantial; happiness feels more grounded; ecstasy is what I shoot for; satisfaction is hardest to attain.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

311. “Missing only the prefix. The ex.”

— Louise Erdrich

312. “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

313. “Small bookstores have the romance of doomed intimate spaces about to be erased by unfettered capitalism.”

— Louise Erdrich

314. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

317. “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

318. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

321. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

325. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

328. “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

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

335. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

337. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

340. “So along with the whiskey and perfume and smoke, she often exuded faint undertones of hay, dust, and the fragrance of horse, which once you smell it you always miss it. Humans were meant to live with the horse.”

— Louise Erdrich

341. “Eau de Better Than Manure,” said Doris. “The farm girl’s friend.”

— Louise Erdrich

342. “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

343. “We try to press against the boundaries of what we are allowed, walk a step past the edge. Our records will be scrutinized by Congress one day and decisions on whether to enlarge our jurisdiction will be made.”

— Louise Erdrich

344. “The world was tender with significance. “Onizhishin, so beautiful,” Patrice murmured.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

346. “We stayed away from the fact of Lark’s existence, or anything to do with our actual thoughts.”

— Louise Erdrich

347. “Barnes spent a lot of time driving the boys to matches with other towns – off-reservation towns where the crowds broke out fake war whoops and jeers when their hometown favorite lost.”

— Louise Erdrich

348. “Marshall vested absolute title to the land in the government and gave Indians nothing more than the right of occupancy, a right that could be taken away at any time.”

— Louise Erdrich

349. “We looked out over the lake. The sun was shards of brilliance. ‘It’s a poem out there,’ I said for some reason. ‘You should write it, Tookie. It’s yours.”

— Louise Erdrich

350. “The jittery focus, the devastated shelves, a couple of fights breaking out over paper towels, a swarm descending on an employee trying to restock toilet paper, madness in people’s eyes – it was like the beginning of every show where the streets empty and some grotesque majestic entity emerges from mist or fire.”

— Louise Erdrich