359 Quotes by Louise Erdrich

The music was more than music – at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous.

How close the dead are. One song away from the living.

When Thomas thought of his father, peace stole across his chest and covered him like sunlight.

Because we shared the loneliness that was one shape. Because I knew that in her old age she shared that same boat, where I had labored. She crested and sank in dark waves. Those waves were taking her onward, through night, through day, the water beating and slashing across her unknown path. She struggled to continue. She was traveling hard, and death was her light.

There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author’s title, but people of the book, who really must be around.

Things started going wrong, as far as Zhaanat was concerned, when places everywhere were named for people – political figures, priests, explorers – and not for the real things that happened in these places – the dreaming, the eating, the death, the appearance of animals. This confusion of the chimookomaanag between the timelessness of the earth and the short span here of mortals was typical of their arrogance.

As animals subject to the laws of earth, we think time is experience. But time is more a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element.

Getting out of bed, out of a chair, changing her position, was like moving furniture.

The snow fell deeper that Easter than it had in forty years, but June walked over it like water and came home.