41 quotes
"I have never seen the truth...without crossing my eyes. Life is crazy." (p135)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
Whenever he thought he knew the truth it merged into another truth. (p327)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
The length of sky is just about the size of my ignorance. Pure and wide. (p40)
Love Medicine (1984)
The only person left alive on the island was a baby girl. (first line)
The Birch Bark House (1999)
Spent, she thought that there was no place as unknown as grief. (p38)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
People assume there is just one sort of Native experience. No.
with The Paris Review (2010)
We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see. (p384)
The Round House (2012)
When we’re young, we think we are the only species worth knowing. But the more I come to know people, the better I like ravens. (p15)
The Painted Drum (2005)
I have always kept notebooks—I have an obsessive devotion to them—and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.
with The Paris Review (2010)
Earth and sky touch everywhere and nowhere, like sex between two strangers. There is no definition and no union for sure. ("The Antelope Wife")
The self will not be forced under, nor will the baby's needs gracefully retreat. The world tips away when we look into our children's faces. (p4)
The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year (1996)
We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try. (p6)
The Bingo Palace (1994)
Now there is a lot more awareness about missing and murdered Indigenous women. And it hasn't - of course, it hasn't stopped. It's probably gotten worse.
with NPR (2020)
Any good business is about its people.
with The Paris Review (2010)
A man finds happiness so fleetingly, like the petals melting off a prairie rose. Even as you touch that feeling it dries up, leaving only the dust of that emotion, a powder of hope. (chapter 9, p99)
Four Souls (2004)
Slowly and inevitably, she fell in love with each person in the family, only she didn’t know what to call it. She simply found herself related. (p184)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape. (p268)
The Plague of Doves (2008)
Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass. (p400)
The Round House (2012)
You know, some people fall right through the hole in their lives. It's invisible, but they come to it after time, never knowing where. (p190)
Love Medicine (1984)
Any judge knows there are many kinds of justice—for instance, ideal justice as opposed to the best-we-can-do justice, which is what we end up with in making so many of our decisions. (p463)
The Round House (2012)