Louise Erdrich Quotes

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

We've come a long way, we've come a long way and we never even left L.A.

Some people drift through their entire life. They do it one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time. It happens so gradually they are unaware of how their lives are slipping away until it's too late.

So it's 1976 and we're still riding on our past success. I mean I've gone on like that for I don't know how long.

Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at!

But I know that I'm not who I was supposed to be. Who I could have been. And I know it's because I was too afraid for too long.

Dwelling in the past prevents doing something in the present.

The past is a closed door.

We have lived too long. The great days are past.

Some people spend their lives failing and never notice.

Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.

While we wait for life, life passes

Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.

But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.

I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.

It all went by so fast, didn't it? I wish I could do it all over again, I really do.

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

If you've never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.

The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.

She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable --- this interminable life.

So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge.