Louise Erdrich Quotes

A month ago there was nothing on Earth I missed, enjoyed, or longed for. I knew I could lose everything and not feel anything, and I rested easy in that knowledge. But I'm growing tired of easy things.

Love may turn to indifference with possession.

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

All love is unrequited. All of it.

I'm lying in my bed, blanket is warm, this body will never keep me safe from harm. I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal. Touch my skin to keep me whole. If only you'd come back to me. To feel you at my side, wouldn't need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied.

When you are not missing something, longing for something, you don't really think about it that much. It's like that girlfriend you don't want to have anymore. You don't think about her anymore. Or ex-husband. You just don't.

We can't feel anything - all that's left inside us is dust.

A rose dreams of enjoying the company of bees, but none appears. The sun asks: “Aren’t you tired of waiting?” “Yes,” answers the rose, “but if I close my petals, I will wither and die.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.

I press my ear against his chest, to the spot where I always rest my head, where I know I will hear the strong and steady beat of his heart. Instead, I find silence.

O beauty, are you not enough; why am I crying after love.

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

My love, I fear the silence of your hands.

For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.

That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. I feel nothing at all.

I’ll wait for you. Come back. The words were not meaningless, but they didn’t touch him now. It was clear enough - one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word.

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.

When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.

I had always been in love with him. I counted the lashes of each closed eye. He had been my almost, my might have been, and I did not want to leave him

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

We love what we can't have, and we can't have what we love.