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Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich Quotes

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Famous Louise Erdrich Quotes

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.”

LoveLifeFeelsHeartReasonFeelingsHappensEarthDeathFallLeftHurtBreakCourageRiskTreeLove YouStrengthBrokenListeningSolitudeProtectNovelistsLife ChangingApplesHappy LifeYearningBrushesSweetnessBetrayedHave CourageBeing StrongProtect YouTastingListen To YourselfStrength Of WillSwallowingCourage StrengthHaving StrengthApple TreesStrong InspirationalCourage To LovePower And StrengthCourage To ChangeLiving AloneInspirational StrengthWay Of LoveHuman StrengthBeing Happy With LifeLife StrengthLove StrengthPower StrengthStrength And LoveStrong LifeRisking Your HeartHurting YourselfFaith And CourageLife Is ComplicatedStrength And LifeStrength And Faith
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“We have these earthly bodies. We don't know what they want. Half the time, we pretend they are under our mental thumb, but that is the illusion of the healthy and the protected. Of sedate lovers. For the body has emotions it conceives and carries through without concern for anyone or anything else. Love is one of those, I guess. Going back to something very old knit into the brain as we were growing. Hopeless. Scorching. Ordinary.”

KnowsWantBodyLove IsEmotionBrainHalfGrowingLoversHealthyOrdinaryIllusionConcernCarrieHopelessProtectedThumbsScorching
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult.”

FeelsChildrenCharacterMotherParentInterestFocusGraceDaughterAdultsGainsConstantParentingClaritySavingCraveAuntMotheringOur DaughterSaving Grace
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.”

KnowsMenHumansSometimesWholeMightEyeTurnsPrayerEmotionPiecesTearsPrayingSpeechCreatorTensionBlanketGarmentsNeedlesStitchesSalvage
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“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.”

KnowsGivingSeemsEyeLostMy OwnPathAirBearsWalkingWeakLegsCuriousNosesStaringSensitiveFrightenedImpressedTrailsDistractedMenaceStanceUnpreparedGravelNot Impressed
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“She had always been a reader… but now she was obsessed. Since her discovery of the book hoard downstairs from her job, she’d been caught up in one such collection of people and their doings after the next…The pleasure of this sort of life – bookish, she supposed it might be called, a reading life – had made her isolation into a rich and even subversive thing. She inhabited one consoling or horrifying persona after another…That she was childless and husbandless and poor meant less once she picked up a book. Her mistakes disappeared into it. She lived with an invented force.”

PeopleMadeBookMightJobsReadingNextForcePleasurePoorMistakeRichReaderDiscoveryCaughtObsessedIsolationCollectionsCaught UpPersonaSubversiveDoingsConsolingReading Life
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“How come we've got these bodies? They are frail supports for what we feel. There are times I get so hemmed in by my arms and legs I look forward to getting past them. As though death will set me free like a traveling cloud... I'll be out there as a piece of the endless body of the world feeling pleasures so much larger than skin and bones and blood.”

WorldFeelsLooksFeelingsBodyPastPleasureSupportPiecesBloodArmsSkinsCloudsLegsBonesEndlessFrailArms And LegsSkin And Bones
Book:Love Medicine
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“So many things in the world have happened before. But it's like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first... In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt smallness, how the earth divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt stars.”

IfsWorldFirstsPersonsHappensEyeEarthNightStarsFeltBitsGrowingHappenedFasterDividedNew ThingsExpansionDividingSmallnessBranching Out
Book:Love Medicine
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