The Birchbark House Quotes

“The buffalo provided the fuel for fires that smoked their own meat.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“This time, the rapids sent them through a dark tunnel that seemed timeless, blind, malevolent. A yawning throat of water.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Porcupine Year

“He wondered if he would ever see the inside of one of those houses whose great windows blared sheaves of light. They made huge blurred spears that reached out into the balmy spring darkness.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Although she lived in town, Old Tallow was so isolated by the force and strangeness of her personality that she could have been surrounded by a huge dark forest. She had never had any children, and each of her three husbands had slunk off in turn during the night, never to be seen again. Nobody knew exactly what it was that Tallow, in her younger days, had done to drive them off. It had probably been something terrible. After the last husband left, her face seemed to have gotten old suddenly, though the rest of her hadn’t weakened. She was a rangy woman over six feet in height. She was powerful, lean, and lived surrounded by ferocious animals more wolf than dog.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House

“Each of Old Tallow’s feet seemed to take up as much space as a small child, but Omakayas didn’t mind. Warily, but completely, she loved the fierce old woman.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Game of Silence

“She told the holy stories and the funny stories, the aadizookaanag that explained how the world came into being, how it continued to be made.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Game of Silence

“The prairie almost seemed to mock them with its beauty. Every inch of their skin was covered with bites upon bites. Their faces were purple and swollen. The mosquitoes bit through cloth, they bit through hair, they were implacable. Every being suffered. Yet they kept moving.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Life had sprung up along the trail. The thin film of green in the trees had become a cloud of new leaves. Robins, bluebirds, vireos, finches, songbirds of all types made the brush along the trail a wall of sharp melody.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Animikiins used all his skills. But the earth is good at swallowing up all traces of people. At last, in spite Animikiins's great powers, they lost his trail.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“She just said nothing. Nothing. She let the silence between them fill the air. Unlike other people, Omakayas had noticed, silence did not make Old Tallow uncomfortable.

Now the warrior lady simply stood and smoked her pipe. The smoke drifted serenely in wavering fangs from each corner of her mouth. She was thinking.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Game of Silence