Through Black Spruce Quotes

“When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“Mother Nature was one angry slut. She'd try and kill you the first chance she got. You'd screwed with her for so long that she was happy to eliminate you.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“Tout ce que je sais, c'est qu'il n'existe pas de héros dans ce monde. Pas vraiment. Rien que des hommes et des femmes devenus vieux et fatigués qui n'ont plus la force de lutter pour ce qu'ils aiment.”
― Joseph Boyden, Les Saisons de la solitude

“There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“I thought of my mother late that night, after leaving Dorothy, as I followed the moon's path back home across the Moose River. My mother, maybe she was in that moon's light. I didn't know any more, but when I was younger, Iuse to imagine that she was. I'd talk to the moon some nights, and I knew my mother listened. I haven't done that in a long time, me." -Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, ch 13, pg 119”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“I passed the friendship centre and nodded to an old couple on the porch. Kookum smiled back and nodded, a cotton kerchief on her head. Moshum's eyes squinted, too, but never looked straight at me, just glanced my presence once, and that was enough. Old school. I knew that when they stood up to hobble home, he would lead a few feet ahead, and she would follow. They grew up in the bush and still walked the same way, as if the wide road was nothing more than a narrow path through the muskeg and spruce.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“Build it all up, and it all falls down. It all burns down. Everything you need can be taken. Remember that, nieces. Everything you hold dear, it can be taken.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“On attend quelque chose, et un matin on se réveille et on comprend. C'est simplement la fin qu'on attend.Selon Lisette, c'est ce que les gens à la télé appelle une dépression.”
― Joseph Boyden, Les Saisons de la solitude

“Lots of times growing up, I’d just try to do something myself because I believed that being a boy, and being Indian, I should just know how to do things." -Will Bird, Through Black Spruce”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

“C'est une longue histoire, je crois. (...) Je désirais la lui raconter sans détours, mais je ne la voyais pas ainsi. Les histoires sont toujours pleines de détours.”
― Joseph Boyden, Les Saisons de la solitude

“Your grandfather was a hero in a war, girls. He wasn't a bad man or a weak man. Maybe he was too old to have a second family, a second wife and your mother and me, so many years after he lost his first. Maybe he was too old to fight anymore, and that's why he let me be taken away. I've thought about this for years and years. All I know is there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer.”
― Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce