MaryAnne

“The [buffalo] bones were picked up by human hands and transported by animal effort, eight dollars, ten dollars, sixteen dollars a ton. They were piled beside the railroad tracks as each section was built farther west. Hills of bones, mountains of blind skulls, loaded onto railroad cars and shipped back east to process sugar. So it was, every teaspoon of sugar that was stirred into a cup or baked into a pudding was haunted by the slave trade and the slaughter of the buffalo. (198)”
― Louise Erdrich

“In some places lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing the sugar beet, perhaps the lest nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious. (221)”
― Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red

“But what I wanted to say is this: After the period of melancholy is over you will be stronger than before, you will recover your health, & you will find the scenery round you so beautiful that you will want nothing but paint”
― Vincent van Gogh

“As boys they were husky. As men they are bulky. They loom like monoliths. They are chainsaw art. As Diz and Gusty lumbered across the yard, strong bulwark guts atop leg beams, they talked. Their thin exquisite lips barely moved. Their handsome wind-whipped faces were impassive in the shadow of billed caps. They had survived their father by sticking together. They never discussed the past. To speak about the way their father, Sport, had treated them would be like grabbing an electric fence. (220)”
― Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red