Louise Erdrich Quotes
[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.
Quotes to Explore
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In 2012, I was over the moon to be there, especially as it was our home Olympics. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I just wanted to take everything in.
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I love what I do professionally, I'm really blessed. But my priority is my husband and my children.
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It takes me a long time writing books. It takes me about five years to write a book, and when I'm done, the last thing I want to do is to do it again.
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I have a really beautiful life right now, so there is no reason to be hostile. I'm a husband, a father and a man who tries to do the right thing in life and in my work.
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One half who graduate from college never read another book.
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I'm not going to break up my family, not for a book.
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I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.
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Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.
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On the streets, hanging out with the fellows, there are things you learn that no book can teach you.
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After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract.
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When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.
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I have a constitutional weakness in which I am very easily distracted by flashing lights. If there is a TV on in the room, I can't have a conversation with you. I won't eat, I won't sleep, I'll just meld with my couch.
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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
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My husband and I don't have sons, so we never had to ask ourselves how we'd have felt about them playing football.
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I like to believe, as a writer, that anybody who isn't a reader yet has just not found the right book.
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Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
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The type of music we know as classical music began with rich people hiring musicians or owning them in a way. Without funding, it's very hard to have this experience. Be it state money or private money, there has to be someone dedicated to raising the money.
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Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.
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The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.
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The doctor I would want for myself or for anyone else I cared about would be one who understands that disease is more than just a clinical entity; it is an experience and a metaphor, with a message that must be listened to.
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My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen.
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My relationship to food is that of an acrophobe to a bridge. Unease masks a desire to jump.
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Segregation, in a sense, helped create and maintain black solidarity.
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[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.
