Louise Erdrich Quotes

It is important to express oneself... provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.

I love acting. It's my playground; it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting. My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind.

If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience, that's fine, if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just shouldn't! They shouldn't read my work!

My poems - I don't even like the sound of that, in a way. Not that anyone else wrote them. But we know that only people who are really close to us care about our personal experience.

You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way.

My theory is that if I can stay present in the moment in my life as frequent as possible the artwork will be more reflective of my nature and my experiences.

I'm quite an emotional person... I ain't just this Northern brat all the time.

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel that it's my vehicle that is essential. I don't know about you, but I don't feel that it's my education that is essential. I don't think what is essential about me is my house or my car or my clothes. What is essential about me? Well, I think what is essential is that I live and embrace life right now, wherever I am. I grab it in my arms! Don't spend time crying about yesterday-yesterday is over with! I forgive my past. I forgive the people who've hurt me. I don't want to spend the rest of my life blaming and pointing a finger.

Opening to oneself fully is opening to the world.

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out.

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

And we can't avoid an inch of our own experience; if we do it causes a blur, a bleep, a puffy unreality. Our job is to wake up to everything, because if we slow down enough, we see that we are everything.

I'm happy with what I'm doing. I try not to focus on how I've changed. I just try to focus on what I'm doing now.

A lot of people talk about life. Some love it. Some disparage it. And a few realize that life can be what you make it because they have learned from past experiences. Lessons learned from these experiences have often contributed greatly toward seeing the possibilities in what some people call "the game of life." When we've "been there" and "done that," we can have as good of an idea of what we don't want as what we do want. Experience is certainly an excellent teacher!

There is nothing harder to come by than detachment and solitude; and nothing more important.

Learn to live more in the Self. Come down a little bit to eat and talk as necessary.

Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.

I have learned to live my life one step, one breath, and one moment at a time, but it was a long road. I set out on a journey of love, seeking truth, peace and understanding. I am still learning.

I forgive myself for not being perfect. I am living the very best way I know how.

Mastery of awareness requires that you never take personal offense.

May God grant me love for that which has splendor; but in this time of my life let me strive for attainable things.

All the things that are negative in me as a person - the incompetence and despair and weakness and pain - are like a gift from God in a performer. If you don't hide them and if you stop lying to yourself about what you are and are not, there is a ring or a tent or a stage where you can take them and use them to make something beautiful.