359 Quotes by Louise Erdrich

Coming down off the trail, I am lost in my own thoughts and unprepared when a bear chugs across the path just before it gives out on the gravel road. I am so distracted that I keep walking towards the bear. I only stop when it rears, stands on hind legs, and stares at me, sensitive nose pressed into the air, weak eyes searching. I have never been this close to a wild bear before, but I am not frightened. There is no menace in its stance; it is not even curious. The bear seems to know who or what I am. The bear is not impressed.

What is this life but the sound of an appalling love.

I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice.

...whom he had saved from a life of excessive freedom

It was just enough to sit there without words.

Be lovely and do no harm.

I truly think that you can't go and stalk your material, you have to leave the door open and whatever chooses you, chooses you. You can't go and wrestle it to the ground.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

i want to hear what's happened to you," she said evenly after a while. she gestured in the direction, down river, of the butcher shop. "it's just that there is nowhere else to start," she said gently. "niether of us is the same. but i'm different because of small, good, manageable things. you're different because ... things i don't know.