Top 120 William Kent Krueger Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Across the dark night, we are not afraid. Our love is the star that guides us. Through the empty desert, we do not thirst. Our love is the water that refreshes. On the long journey, we do not weary. Our love is the truth that offers strength. As the mountains rise before us, we are not discouraged. Our love is the hope that waits on the other side. When we are together, let us hold hands. Our love is the promise that is never broken.”

— William Kent Krueger

2. “All life is one weaving, one design by the hand of the Creator, the Great Mystery. All life is connected, thread by thread.”

— William Kent Krueger

3. “Open yourself to every possibility, for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so.”

— William Kent Krueger

4. “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful graces of God.”

— William Kent Krueger

5. “Once someone’s dead, being sorry doesn’t cut it. If you hit a man, you can apologize. If you destroy his property, you can pay him back. But if you take his life, there’s nothing you can ever do to make that right. Do you understand?”

— William Kent Krueger

6. “Straight is my path. Straight is my mind. Straight is my heart. Straight is my speech. Kind will I be to my brothers and sisters. Kind will I be to beast and bird.”

— William Kent Krueger

7. “Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.”

— William Kent Krueger

8. “I used to ask for an easy life, now I ask to be strong.”

— William Kent Krueger

9. “The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.”

— William Kent Krueger

10. “The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.”

— William Kent Krueger

11. “I’ve always thought of her in the way I think of a precious gem: The beauty isn’t in the jewel itself, but in the way the light shines through it.”

— William Kent Krueger

12. “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.”

— William Kent Krueger

13. “If we put everything in God’s hands, maybe we don’t any of us have to be afraid anymore.”

— William Kent Krueger

14. “Grief doesn’t come in the moment of loss. It comes in the quiet of the aftermath.”

— William Kent Krueger

15. “Heavenly Father, for the blessings of this food and these friends and our families, we thank you. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

— William Kent Krueger

16. “Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God.”

— William Kent Krueger

17. “Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful, tender land.”

— William Kent Krueger

18. “God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn’t suffer, that we wouldn’t feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love.”

— William Kent Krueger

19. “If we were perfect, the light he shines on us would just bounce right off. But the wrinkles, they catch the light. And the cracks, that’s how the light gets inside us. When I pray, Odie, I never pray for perfection. I pray for forgiveness, because it’s the one prayer I know will always be answered.”

— William Kent Krueger

20. “What life gives us, good or bad, we seldom deserve.”

— William Kent Krueger

21. “Love comes in so many forms, and pain is no different.”

— William Kent Krueger

22. “THERE IS A river that runs through time and the universe, vast and inexplicable, a flow of spirit that is at the heart of all existence, and every molecule of our being is a part of it. And what is God but the whole of that river?”

— William Kent Krueger

23. “We breathe love in and we breathe love out. It’s the essence of our existence, the very air of our souls.”

— William Kent Krueger

24. “IN THE BEGINNING, after he labored over the heavens and the earth, the light and the dark, the land and sea and all living things that dwell therein, after he created man and woman and before he rested, I believe God gave us one final gift. Lest we forget the divine source of all that beauty, he gave us stories.”

— William Kent Krueger

25. “LOSS COMES IN every moment. Second by second our lives are stolen from us. What is past will never come again.”

— William Kent Krueger

26. “And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it’s only a moment’s pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time.”

— William Kent Krueger

27. “Sam Winter Moon had cautioned him long ago that it was best to believe in all possibilities, that there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand. 13.”

— William Kent Krueger

28. “But I believe if you tell a story, it’s like sending a nightingale into the air with the hope that its song will never be forgotten.”

— William Kent Krueger

29. “Everything that’s been done to us we carry forever. Most of us do our damnedest to hold on to the good and forget the rest. But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can’t or won’t touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams.”

— William Kent Krueger

30. “So, among the many pieces of wisdom life has offered me over all these years is this: Open yourself to every possibility, for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so.”

— William Kent Krueger

31. “Our eyes perceive so dimly, and our brains are so easily confused. Far better, I believe, to be like children and open ourselves to every beautiful possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so.”

— William Kent Krueger

32. “Loss, once it’s become a certainty, is like a rock you hold in your hand. It has weight and dimension and texture. It’s solid and can be assessed and dealt with. You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away.”

— William Kent Krueger

33. “Finally Albert whispered, “Listen, Odie, what does a shepherd eat?” I didn’t know where he was going with that, so I didn’t reply. “His flock,” Albert told me. “One by one.”

— William Kent Krueger

34. “Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them.”

— William Kent Krueger

35. “The beauty isn’t in the jewel itself, but in the way the light shines through it.”

— William Kent Krueger

36. “It’s hard to say good-bye and almost impossible to accomplish this alone and ritual is the railing we hold to, all of us together, that keeps us upright and connected until the worst is past.”

— William Kent Krueger

37. “In a small town nothing is private. Word spreads with the incomprehensibility of magic and the speed of plague.”

— William Kent Krueger

38. “Buck, the heart is a rubber ball. No matter how hard it’s crushed, it bounces back.”

— William Kent Krueger

39. “When I pray, Odie, I never pray for perfection. I pray for forgiveness, because it’s the one prayer I know will always be answered.”

— William Kent Krueger

40. “Fishing, Danny boy, is purely a state of mind. Some men, when they are fishing, are after fish. Me, I’m after things you could never set a barbed hook in.”

— William Kent Krueger

41. “Of all that we’re asked to give others in this life, the most difficult to offer may be forgiveness.”

— William Kent Krueger

42. “It’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.”

— William Kent Krueger

43. “That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”

— William Kent Krueger

44. “I’ve come to understand that there’s a good deal of value in the ritual accompanying death. It’s hard to say good- bye and almost impossible to accomplish this alone and ritual is the railing we hold to, all of us together, that keeps us upright and connected until the worst is past.”

— William Kent Krueger

45. “In the absence of proof, you believe.”

— William Kent Krueger

46. “She gazed at me, and in her eyes I found what it was I’d been searching for all along, searching for without understanding. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, heart of my heart.”

— William Kent Krueger

47. “History. And from history came community. And community was something that spread out beyond itself, resulting in towns and nations. But it all began with family.”

— William Kent Krueger

48. “It seems to me, Buck, that if you can find peace in your heart, God’s not far away.”

— William Kent Krueger

49. “In every sinner, Gertie, is the possibility of a saint.”

— William Kent Krueger

50. “Bobby had a secret. You know what it was? It took nothing to make him happy. That was it. He held happiness in his hand easy as if he’d just, I don’t know, plucked a blade of grass form the ground. And all he did his whole short life was offer that happiness to anybody who’d smile at him. That’s all he wanted form me. From you. From anybody. A smile.”

— William Kent Krueger