Empire of Wild Quotes

“Christians were like house cats, really. Just leave out the sustenance and let them roam in a confined space where they think they're free.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“A creature who understands his own damn self and isn't distracted by fear or pain: that's the creature you don't turn your back on.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“his red bow tie the colour of shock and murder.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“Whenever the old people got quieter in their volume and more precise in their words, Joan had learned to shut the hell up. So she did.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“The tent was much bigger than it looked from the outside. The ceiling was high enough to be forgotten.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“Snowflakes tumbled down so huge and slow it was if they'd been cut from folded paper by a pair of delicate shears. The parking lot was a poem about white.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“Over the years, without treaty and without wealth, the halfbreeds were moved away from the shorelines where million dollar cottages were built in a flurry of hammers on lumber, so many at one time it was as if the shore was standing to an ovation.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild

“On these lands, in both the occupied places and those left to grow wild, alongside the community and the dwindling wildlife, there lived another creature. At night, he roamed the roads that connected Arcand to the larger town across the Bay where Native people were still unwelcome two centuries on. His name was spoken in the low tones saved for swear words and prayer. He was the threat from a hundred stories told by those old enough to remember the tales.
Broke Lent?
The rogarou will come for you.
Slept with a married woman?
Rogarou will find you.
Talked back to your mom in the heat of the moment?
Don't walk home. Rogarou will snatch you up.
Hit a woman under any circumstance?
Rogarou will call you family, soon.
Shot too many deer, so your freezer is overflowing but the herd thin?
If I were you, I'd stay indoors at night. Rogarou knows by now.
He was a dog, a man, a wolf. He was clothed, he was naked in his fur, he wore moccasins to jig. He was whatever made you shiver but he was always there, standing by the road, whistling to the stars so that they pulsed bright in the navy sky, as close and as distant as ancestors.
For girls, he was the creature who kept you off the road or made you walk in packs. The old women never said, "Don't go into town, it is not safe for us there. We go missing. We are hurt." Instead, they leaned in and whispered a warning: "I wouldn't go out on the road tonight. Someone saw the rogarou just this Wednesday, leaning against the stop sign, sharpening his claws with the jawbone of a child."
For boys, he was the worst thing you could ever be. "You remember to ask first and follow her lead. You don't want to turn into Rogarou. You'll wake up with blood in your teeth, not knowing and no way to know what you've done."
Long after that bone salt, carried all the way from the Red River, was ground to dust, after the words it was laid down with were not even a whisper and the dialect they were spoken in was rubbed from the original language into common French, the stories of the rogarou kept the community in its circle, behind the line. When the people forgot what they had asked for in the beginning - a place to live, and for the community to grow in a good way - he remembered, and he returned on padded feet, light as stardust on the newly paved road. And that rogarou, heart full of his own stories but his belly empty, he came home not just to haunt. He also came to hunt.”
― Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild