It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.
You know, some people fall right through the hole in their lives. It's invisible, but they come to it after time, never knowing where.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the unseen challenges that individuals may face in life, often leading them to a feeling of emptiness or loss without understanding the cause.
Louise Erdrich's quote speaks to the existential struggles that many individuals confront throughout their lives. It suggests that there are gaps or 'holes' in our existence, often unnoticed, which can lead to a sense of disorientation or lack of fulfillment. These holes symbolize the emotional or psychological voids that can form as we navigate through life, highlighting the importance of awareness and introspection in understanding our personal journeys.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming life's obstacles.
More from Louise Erdrich
All quotes βIt was just enough to sit there without words.
Life 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.
The world tips away when we look into our children's faces.
...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?
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.
Similar quotes
Iβve had enough, this is my prayer, that Iβll die living just as free as my hair.
Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.
I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
Biographies of me have usually been compiled from old newspaper clips, untruthful publicity stories, and reminiscences of people who claim to have known me well.