Louise Erdrich Quotes

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

You've got to live life to write a book about it.

As I've gotten older and my life is a lot more stable, I've gotten more into storytelling.

I'm not the same young man I was when I first got into music.

I feel like with everything you do, everything you make, everything you experience, y'know, even the dumb stuff that you don't even really pay much attention to, like the mundane stuff that happens to you every day, it shapes the person who you are.

Each experience I go through - marriage, my public life, my personal life - I'm learning as I go.

Every experience makes you grow.

Certainly a decade and a half out in the real world, bashing my head against things, probably made me into a more textured writer. It gives you something to write about.

People mature with age and experience. I hope I more resemble a fine wine than bad vinegar.

The further you go, what, I'm gonna wait til I'm 80? Naw, I'm tellin' my story now. I was just moved. I was moved to tell my story. You know? People write books all the time.

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

Educate yourself as much as you can with life. Just go out there.

When I was a little kid, I told stories.

I like for there to be a moral, for the character to have gotten something out of the experience.

My whole life has been one of seeking experience.

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

Teaching does allow me to keep one foot in the youthful waters I tend to occupy in my novels, so I'm thankful for that. My students also remind me on a daily basis that the stories I collected during my district attorney days are actually interesting to people who haven't had that experience.

I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

I've produced and gotten to do a lot of optimistic love stories, and that was so where I was at for 10 years in my life. And now I feel like, Okay, now I know how to do that. I want to get scared again; I want to feel the way I felt when I started my company, when I started producing.

Life experience is what defines our character, even if it means getting your heart broken or being lied to. You know, you need the downs to appreciate the ups. Going on the adventure or taking that risk is important.

I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life.

From 15 to 18, everybody is a different person. Every six months, I have a whole new outlook on life.

You need to live life to be able to have something to draw from.

At the end of a song, someone's always different than they are at the beginning.