The Bingo Palace Quotes

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Cold sinks in, there to stay. And people, they'll leave you, sure. There's no return to what was and no way back. There's just emptiness all around, and you in it, like singing up from the bottom of a well, like nothing else, until you harm yourself, until you are a mad dog biting yourself for sympathy. Because there is no relenting.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other. Throw it in the garbage and it springs up clean. Try to root it out and it only flourishes. Love is a weed, a dandelion that you poison from your heart. The taproots wait. The seeds blow off, ticklish, into a part of the yard you didn't spray. And one day, though you worked, though you prodded out each spiky leaf, you lift your eyes and dozens of fat golden faces bob in the grass.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Our reservation is not real estate, luck fades when sold. Attraction has no staying power, no weight, no heart.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Pain comes to us from deep back, from where it grew in the human body. Pain sucks more pain into it, we don't know why. It lives, and we harbor its weight. When the worst comes, we will not act the opposite. We will do what we were taught, we who learnt our lessons in the dead light. We pass them on. We hurt, and hurt others, in a circular motion.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Albertine was one of those who took on too much in order to remain perpetually dissatisfied with herself.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“You undergo your own incarceration. You may witness your demise piece by piece. You may be one kind of fool who never gets enough or another who gets too much.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“I spend my time dwelling on revenge and try to deal with the monsters crawling out of the ashes.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“We'll get to the truth quicker if we don't worry about logic.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace