It was just enough to sit there without words.
Louise ErdrichRead
It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humor is essential in discussing and understanding Native life, as it helps people cope with challenges.
Louise Erdrich emphasizes the importance of humor in expressing the complexities of Native life. She suggests that humor not only serves as a coping mechanism but also as a vital tool for communicating experiences and maintaining a sense of sanity amidst difficulties.
Themes
HumorNative LifeSanityCopingCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about cultural resilience, one might cite this quote to illustrate the role of humor in hardship.
More from Louise Erdrich
All quotes βLife will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.
Louise ErdrichRead
The world tips away when we look into our children's faces.
Louise ErdrichRead
...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as humble as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?
Louise ErdrichRead
Her mind was present because she was always gone. Her hands were filled because they grasped the meaning of empty. Life was simple. Her husband returned and she served him with indifferent patience this time. When he asked what had happened to her heat for him, she gestured to the west. The sun was setting. The sky was a body of fire.
Louise ErdrichRead
All of our actions have in their doing the seed of their undoing. ... That in her creation of her children there should be the unspeakable promise of their death, for by their birth she had created mortal beings.
Louise ErdrichRead
Similar quotes
I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.
William Tecumseh ShermanRead
It never seems to occur to some people, that, like beauty, a sense of humor may sometimes be fatal.
Edgar Rice BurroughsRead
Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.
Doris Kearns GoodwinRead
Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.
Ambrose BierceRead