Top 350 Louise Erdrich Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “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

304. “But every so often the government remembered about Indians. And when they did, they always tried to solve Indians, thought Thomas. They solve us by getting rid of us.”

— Louise Erdrich

305. “She had felt the movement of something vaster, impersonal yet personal, in her life. She thought that maybe people in contact with that nameless greatness had a way of catching at the edges, a way of being pulled along or even entering this thing beyond experience.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

307. “Maybe this was what being in a pandemic brought forth. When everything big is out of control, you start taking charge of small things.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

309. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

314. “And so we sat there. Two haunted women. And one unhaunted baby trailing clouds of glory.”

— Louise Erdrich

315. “The buffalo provided the fuel for fires that smoked their own meat.”

— Louise Erdrich

316. “A little tap on the window-pane, as though something had struck it, followed by a plentiful light falling sound, as of grains of sand being sprinkled from a window overhead, gradually spreading, intensifying, acquiring a regular rhythm, becoming fluid, sonorous, musical, immeasurable, universal: it was the rain.”

— Louise Erdrich

317. “I bounced around on top naturally. But that belly, yai! It grew big as a hill and I couldn’t see over it. I’d call out, Are you still back there? Holler to me! Like most fat Indians he did have a skinny butt. Man, those muscles in his back cheeks were powerful, too. He swung me around like a circus act. So I enjoyed him real well, those times were good. Awee, said Mooshum. His voice was wistful.”

— Louise Erdrich

318. “I love a good relish plate,” Wood Mountain said sincerely.”

— Louise Erdrich

319. “The warm metal, the gentle ridges, the rounded feminine base of the cap, were pleasant to hold.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

322. “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

323. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

325. “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

326. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

328. “Millie was talking about the classes she would take next semester. Patrice was listening to the titles of the classes. “What do I have to do to become a lawyer?” asked Patrice. Millie told her.”

— Louise Erdrich

329. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

331. “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

332. “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

333. “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

334. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

336. “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

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

340. “Her voice was often heavy with dismissed hope.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

342. “And so to be afraid of entering the cemetery by night was to fear not the loving ancestors who lay buried, but the gut kick of our history, which I was bracing to absorb. The old cemetery was filled with its complications.”

— Louise Erdrich

343. “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

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

— Louise Erdrich

345. “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

346. “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

347. “Everyone seems to have within themselves a collection of poems.”

— Louise Erdrich

348. “You’re not very trusting. Are you sure you haven’t been around here before?” “My dad is a drunk.” “Oh, I get it,” said Jack. “Mine was too.”

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich

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

— Louise Erdrich