The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse QUOTES

2 " For it was through books that she felt her life to be unjudged Look at all of the great mix-ups, messes, confinement, and double-dealings in Shakespeare, she thought.Identities disguised continually, in a combative dance of illusion and discovery. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

4 " Nector [speaking to Bernadette] could have told her, having drunk down the words of Nanapush, that comfort is not security and money in the hand disappears. He could have told her that only the land matters and never to let go of the papers, the titles, the tracks of the words, all those things that his ancestors never understood how the vital relationship to the dirt and grass under their feet. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

6 " Sometimes owls came near to warn of death. Sometimes they just asked people to be careful. Sometimes they were just owls. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

8 " It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of fantastic suffering. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

10 " We Anishinaabeg are the keepers of the names of the earth. And unless the earth is called by the names it gave us humans, won’t it cease to love us? And isn’t it true that if the earth stops loving us, everyone, not just the Anishinaabeg, will cease to exist? That is why we all must speak our language, nindinawemagonidok, and call everything we see by the name of its spirit. Even the chimookomanag, who are trying to destroy us, are depending upon us to remember. Mi’sago’i. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

12 " The buffalo were taking leave of the earth and all they loved,” said the old chiefs and hunters after years had passed and they could tell what split their hearts. “The buffalo went crazy with grief to see the end of things. Like us, they saw the end of things and like many of us, many today, they did not care to live. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

14 " What is the whole of our existence," said Father Damien, practicing his sermon from the new pulpit, "but the sound of an appalling love?"

The snakes slid quietly among the feet of the empty pews.

"What is the question we spend our entire lives asking? Our question is this: Are we loved? I don't mean by one another. Are we loved by the one who made us? Constantly, we look for evidence. In the gifts we are given--children, good weather, money, a happy marriage perhaps--we find assurance. In contrast, our pains, illnesses, the deaths of those we love, our poverty, our innocent misfortunes--those we take as signs that God has somehow turned away. But, my friends, what exactly is love here? How to define it? Does God's love have anything at all to do with the lack or plethora of good fortune at work in our lives? Or is God's love, perhaps, something very different from what we think we know? ...

I am like you," said Father Damien to the snakes, "curious and small." He dropped his arms. "Like you, I poise alertly and open my senses to try to read the air, the clouds, the sun's slant, the little movements of the animals, all in the hope I will learn the secret of whether I am loved."

The snakes coiled and recoiled, curved over and underneath themselves.

"If I am loved," Father Damien went on, "it is a merciless and exacting love against which I have no defense. If I am not loved, then I am being pitilessly manipulated by a force I cannot withstand, either, and so it is all the same. I must do what I must do. Go in peace. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

16 " The moonless sky was a rich wild blackness of stars. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

18 " Why do the chimookomanag want us?” she growled. “They take all that makes us Anishinaabeg. Everything about us. First our land, then our trees. Now husbands, our wives, our children, our souls. Why do they want to capture every bit? "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

20 " Gregory was in the walls, in the crawl space between the board floor of the cabin and the bitter ground. He was gone, but he was everywhere. He was on the small pantry shelf where canning was removed. The air of the cabin still held Gregory. He filled and expanded every dark corner, tight, to exploding. He was jammed between her legs so that no matter how she moved, he was inside of Agnes. She couldn't shake him from her vestments or burn him from the stove. He nested in the books, of course. She couldn't stand to touch their pages. He was in the sweet, fragrant wood Mary Kashpaw chopped, split, and piled. In the cloth of curtains, the clasp of doors, he waited. She turned the handle, let the light in, and he came, too, solid and good and alive. "

― Louise Erdrich , The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse