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Louise Erdrich Quotes

Writer

Louise Erdrich is an American writer known for her unique literary style and profound depiction of Native American culture. Her works blend elements of ethnicity, history, and literature, enjoying great popularity among readers.

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All Knows Thinking World People Ifs Feels Chippewa Louise Erdrich Love Native American Ojibwe The Birchbark House Way Anishnaabe Lakota Life Body Book Earth Heart

Famous Louise Erdrich Quotes

“I don't pray. When I was young, I vowed I never would be caught begging God. If I want something I get it for myself. I go to church only to show the old hens they don't get me down.”

Ifs Want Shows Would Be Young Church Praying Caught Want Something Begging Hens

Book:Love Medicine

Source: Love Medicine

“You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.”

Ifs Needs Believe Has Beens Book Approach Finished Copies

Author:Louise Erdrich

“It kills your writing if you try to manipulate it with crude politics.”

Ifs Writing Trying Manipulate Crude

Author:Louise Erdrich

“I have brothers and was a tomboy, if that's still a designation. It wasn't a stretch for me to think and write as a 13-year-old boy - it is freeing.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Years Stills Boys Brother Designation

Author:Louise Erdrich

“I make very involved drawings, even little structures, and try using design to figure out the rhythm of a plot. If there are several narrators then a clue has to pop up in the first line. There have to be certain grammatical clues, or distinctive names.”

Ifs Trying Firsts Littles Certain Names Lines Figures Design Involved Structure Pops Drawing Rhythm Plot Clue Distinctive Narrators

Author:Louise Erdrich

“If only I had discipline, but alas, it is only an obsessive-compulsive trait and the beauty of habit that causes me to return again and again to my work.”

Ifs Causes Return Habit Discipline Traits Again And Again Alas Obsessive Obsessive Compulsive

Author:Louise Erdrich

“If, as I suspect, my body survives by uttering itself over and over again, then I have some questions. If [I] am one word, so are my daughters, so are all of us in strings and loops. Each life is one short word slowly uttered.”

Ifs Body Life Is Daughter Strings My Daughter Suspects One Word Loops Short Words

Author:Louise Erdrich

“It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway--in secret.”

Ifs Writing Stills Book Would Be Wanted Secret I Realized

Author:Louise Erdrich

“Ravens are the birds I'll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.”

Ifs Looks Light Dies Black Darkness Missing Bird Ravens

Book:The Painted Drum: A Novel

Source: The Painted Drum: A Novel

“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.”

Ifs World Firsts Persons Happens Eye Earth Night Stars Felt Bits Growing Happened Faster Divided New Things Expansion Dividing Smallness Branching Out

Book:Love Medicine

Source: Love Medicine

“But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.”

Ifs Facts Embellishment

Book:The Plague of Doves: Deluxe Modern Classic

Source: The Plague of Doves: Deluxe Modern Classic

“At times the whole sky was ringed in shooting points and puckers of light gathering and falling, pulsing, fading, rhythmical as breathing. All of a piece. As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories traveled across it. As if the sky were one gigantic memory for us all.”

Ifs Whole Light Fall Memories Pieces Sky Patterns Breathing Shooting Nerves Traveled Our Thoughts Gathering Fading

Book:Love Medicine

Source: Love Medicine

“If life's a joke, then suicide's a bad punch line.”

Ifs Lines Jokes Suicide

Author:Louise Erdrich

About the Author

Born: June 7, 1954
Known for: Writer
Quotes: 203

Books & Sources

Love MedicineRelated source material

ChickadeeRelated source material

The Night WatchmanRelated source material

LaRoseRelated source material

The Painted DrumRelated source material

The Game of SilenceRelated source material

The Round HouseRelated source material

Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael DorrisRelated source material

Original FireRelated source material

The Antelope WifeRelated source material

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