Quotes From "The Antelope Wife" By Louise Erdrich

1
He had a thousand-year-old stare. Louise Erdrich
2
A woman's body is the gate to this life. A man's body is the gate to the next life. Louise Erdrich
3
I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I want her in a new way, a way she's never been told about. Louise Erdrich
4
The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other's colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their being. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer. Louise Erdrich
5
She gave her husband such a night of sexual pleasure that his eyes followed her constantly after that, narrow and hot. He grew molten when she passed near other men, and at night they made their own shaking tent. They got teased too much and moved farther off, into the brush, into the nesting ground of shy and holy loons. There, no one could hear them. In solitude they made love until they became gaunt and hungry, pale windigos with aching eyes, tongues of flame. Louise Erdrich
6
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 Erdrich
7
Emotions unreel in her like spools of cotton. Louise Erdrich