Louise Erdrich

“What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on carrying you into a similarly unsatisfactory future?”

“Memory is a wild thing, a wolf that won't be tamed.”

“We are all passing through, and we must be kind to one another, and do what we can for one another, and not judge one another for our weakness or our sorrow.”

“To be vital, a language must be used. No language is ever dead.”

“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.”

“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no separating them.”

“Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.”

“So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.”

“Grief is a house where the chairs have forgotten how to hold us.”

“The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of things—memories, regrets, longings.”

“History is a flood, and the books are the boats. We are all sailors, and we must learn to navigate the currents.”

“The world is a story we are all telling ourselves.”

“Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to just be kind to each other.”

“We must tell our own stories, or others will tell them for us.”

“The land is the only thing that lasts.”

“It is a curiosity of human nature that we are more interested in the fallen than the blessed.”

“We have to live with our mistakes. We have to pay for them. We have to learn from them.”

“When you are a reader you are a traveler, a time traveler, and a space traveler. You can go anywhere, and meet anyone, and live in any time.”