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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I have no ambivalence about myself wearing make-up or designer clothes but I have an enormous ambivalence about what the fashion world has done to women.
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Each weekend I play at least one and maybe two sets of tennis a day. My doubles team was in the finals recently at my tennis club in Palm Beach and lost a tiebreaker after a three-hour match. I must confess, by the end of the three hours, I was relieved it was over.
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Marry an outdoors woman. Then if you throw her out into the yard on a cold night, she can still survive.
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I'm working on a snow scene right now, and it's summer. It's hot, and I will get chilly. I'll have to turn on the heat. My wife walks in, and it's 95 degrees in the studio. I know it's nutty, but it's a projection you have where you step into the painting.
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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.
