Louise Erdrich

On any state elections map, the reservations are blue places. Native people are most often progressives, Democrats, and by no means gun-toting vigilantes.

Columbus only discovered that he was in some new place. He didn't discover America.

I write first drafts by hand. Never do I open an umbrella inside the house. I don't predict wins or losses. I used to stand on a certain piece of rug if my brothers and husband were watching football and their team got in trouble - but now the luck went out of that rug. If a circle is involved, I try to go clockwise.

I grew up in Wahpeton, N.D., and I didn't leave until I was 18, and I've kept going back.

I grew up in North Dakota around Dakota and Ojibwe people, and also small-town people in Wahpeton. Writers make few choices, really, about their material. We have to write about what comes naturally and what interests us - so I do.

There are several kinds of land on reservations. And all of these pieces of land have different entities who are in charge of enforcing laws on this land.

Most writers have been influenced by Faulkner.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.

My parents' marriage is a gift to everyone around them - 60 years of making their kids laugh. How many parents are actually funny?

I'd love to meet my ancestors. I'd love to be able to speak to them.

I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.

Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.