Louise Erdrich Quotes

If I see something in somebody, if it's something similar in my shot, I feel like it's the same type of thing in life. People who tell you what to do all the time or have all the answers for you, it's like, 'OK, whatever.' But if you've gone through something in life, you can speak to something a little more.

We all want to believe in the magic of someone knowing what we're thinking.

I have spent many years trying to recover a common language, one that can cross the distance between people.

He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often--he searched for a simile, found one in his work--torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?

I think laughter between people is a holy form of connection, of communion. It's the way you and I look at each other and without words, say, I get exactly what you're saying. And so, it's important to me.

Enter others' minds and let them enter yours.

I think I was able to talk to people about values in ways that people - in ways that resonated with folks.

People don't need sex so much as they need to be listened to.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.I am human: nothing human is alien to me.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the 'nay' in your own mind, nor do you withhold the 'ay. And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

Let the brain go to work, let it meet the heart and you will be able to forgive.

In order for romance to deepen, you must touch the heart and mind of your wife before you touch her body.

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us — a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain — it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves.

So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.

He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine- I am sure he is- I feel akin to him- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.

If there's something you know and there's something you feel, but you can't quite express it, you will hear it somewhere. And you don't have to worry, because someone will get it sung out.

I wish that we could look into each other's faces, in each other's eyes, and see our own selves. I hope that the children have not been so scarred by their upbringing that they only think fear when they see someone else who looks separate from them.

A lot of people have told me, you know, that what I've written about, they identify with strongly.

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

Sometimes you think certain details are things that only you would notice, so it's a great thing to feel like you're not by yourself and people understand where you're coming from.

Thoughts are wonderful things, that they can bring two people, so far apart, into harmony and understanding for even a little while.