A Quote by Louise Erdrich
My mother is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and she lived on her home reservation. My father taught there. He had just been discharged from the Air Force. He went to school on the GI Bill and got his teaching credentials. He is adventurous - he worked his way through Alaska at age seventeen and paid for his living expenses by winning at the poker table.
Related Quotes
His mother got her purse. His father reached for the door. "Scooter," he said, by way of good-bye, "have fun with your friends." But Hale was shaking his head. He put his arm around Kat's shoulders. "She's not my friend, Dad. She's my girlfriend." Hale's parents must have walked away, but Kat wasn't looking. She was too busy staring up at Hale, trying to see into his eyes and know if he was okay. The sadness that had lingered for weeks was fading, and the boy that held her was the boy she knew. A boy who kissed her lightly.
When I was young, my dad, a veteran who attended college on the GI Bill, lost his job at age 55 when the company he worked for was sold. My entire family pitched in - my mom took in sewing, and I got a minimum wage job after school.
My father had a real short fuse. He had a tough life - had to support his mother and brother at a very young age when his dad's farm collapsed. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one. My father was full of terrifying anger.
In my earliest of years, my mother was a huge force in my life. She was for all intents and purposes, a single parent. My father had abandoned us. He was an alcoholic and a physical abuser. My mother lived through that tyranny and made her living as a domestic worker. She was uneducated but she brought high principles and decent values into our existence, and she set lofty goals for herself and for her children. We were forever inspired by her strength and by her resistance to racism and to fascism.
My father did not live with us. When he came home, he never took off his shoes - he wouldn't be staying. My father had another family: Although my father had two homes, he paid for our education and household expenses.
It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean.
Strangely, what pierced his heart and mind most sharply was not the memory of her lips under his at the ball, but the way she had leaned into his neck, as if she trusted him utterly. He would have given everything he had in the world and everything he would ever have, just to lie beside her in the narrow infirmary bed and hold her while she slept. Pulling away from her had been like pulling his own skin off, but he'd had to do it.
The day after his father left, Franz and his mother went into town together, and as they left home Franz noticed that her shoes did not match. He was in a quandary: he wanted to point out the mistake, but was afraid he would hurt her. So, during the two hours they spent walking through the city together he kept his eyes focused on her feet. It was then he had his first inkling of what it means to suffer.
My grandfather had been on the New York City force with his 11 brothers around the turn of the century. He was killed in the line of duty. My father, who was 16, was the oldest son, so he had to quit school and go to work to support his mother.
Kevin stopped where he was and stood there simply gazing at her. Molly sat cross-legged in the meadow with the sun shining on her bare shoulders and a pair of yellow butterflies fluttering like hair bows around her head. She was all the dreams he'd lost at dawn-dreams of everything he hadn't understood he needed until now. She was his playmate, his confidante, the lover who made his blood rush. She was the mother of his children and the companion of his old age. She was the joy of his heart.
A light was on in the kitchen. His mother sat at the kitchen table, as still as a statue. Her hands were clasped together, and she stared fixatedly at a small stain on the tablecloth. Gregor remembered seeing her that way so many nights after his dad had disappeared. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to scare her or shock her or ever give her any more pain. So, he stepped into the light of the kitchen and said the one thing he knew she wanted to hear most in the world. "Hey, Mom. We're home.
Daniel's face-- the way it had been bathed in violet light when he'd carried her home this morning-- appeared before her eyes. His gleaming golden hair. His tender, knowing eyes. The way one touch of his lips transported her far away from any darkness. For him, she'd suffer all of this, and more.
Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn’t that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.
Could he be naked beneath his breeches? They seemed molded to him, outlining the powerful lines of his thighs and the swell just above— Oh, God. She closed her eyes. She’d been looking at his—Not only was it rude, but it had sent an amazing tingle through her, almost as if she’d touched it. “Fiona, if you ever look at me like that again, I will not be held responsible for what I do.” Jack was so close that she could feel his breath on her temple. “Do you understand?
My father had a lot of allergies, and he just didn't like the cold of Chicago, and his father - his parents had broken up when he was young, and his father had lived in Pasadena for a while, and he kind of fell in love with Southern California.
So this is the young man who has intentions toward my little girl." Bobby shifted in his seat and crossed his legs. "It is not fun on this side of the table, is it, Robert?" Uncle Eddie huffed, and Kat had to remember that once upon a time her mother had been a dark-haired girl in that kitchen, and her dad had been the stray she'd brought home. She watched the two men looking at Hale as if they'd never before laid eyes on him. "He's better-looking than the last vagabond I had to take in," Eddie said, standing and carrying empty bowls to the sink. "I'll give him that.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer