Python's Kiss Quotes

“Once the tack and harness was untangled, the son lifted himself away from his mother. He stood alone as he was being rubbed dry with hay. When half of you is gone, the half left behind begins its long descent into a cold strange barn. No matter how warm you get you are never warm and no matter how much you eat you are never full. You are out of harness but somehow pulling the entire weight. At least the authority came to him. Cradled his jaw, kept running the brush along his back, made the sounds they make when they must stand up to a loss. It wasn't enough, but the man stayed near and made noises why if only and why and if only and if only why -- all sorts of nonsense -- and gave shape to the suffering.”
― Louise Erdrich, Python's Kiss

“That night, I fall asleep knowing there is always a chance I will wake in the night certain I am an outcast, outside the common run of humanity, an imposter by light of day. . . . And I wonder.  Can it be that all of us upon waking sometimes feel malformed or broken, foolish, as we huddle in our nests all over the earth? Perhaps, I think this pit of shame without perspective is the true human connection.  Perhaps this sharing of soul dregs is what makes it possible to write a poem . .  The most I can probably aspire to is to be counted among the people who care for the small, the ordinary, the overlooked creatures of the earth.  Because I am one . . . ”
― Louise Erdrich, Python's Kiss

“A stone is a thought that the earth develops over inhuman time. It is a living thing to some cultures and a dead thing to others.”
― Louise Erdrich, Python's Kiss

“Kenny put his arms around me and it felt good, as long as I turned off all common sense.”
― Louise Erdrich, Python's Kiss

“I thought about how the charmed awkwardness of my youth has now hardened to a different sort of awkwardness entirely.”
― Louise Erdrich, Python's Kiss

“Awakening, I would allow my consciousness to drift back into my body. There would always be, first, the sword of grief, which I would allow to stake me to the mattress,”
― Louise Erdrich, Python's Kiss