"Nothing. I was a model child. It was the teacher’s mistake I am sure. The box was drawn on the blackboard and the names of misbehaving children were written in it. As I adored my teacher, Miss Smith, I was destroyed to see my name appear. This was just the first of the many humiliations of my youth that I’ve tried to revenge through my writing. I have never fully exorcised shames that struck me to the heart as a child except through written violence, shadowy caricature, and dark jokes."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesChildren's authors20th-century poets from the United StatesNative AmericansMagic realism authors
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
On how a childhood experience shaped her future writing in “Louise Erdrich, The Art of Fiction No. 208” in The Paris Review (Winter 2010)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louise_Erdrich
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Louise Erdrich
118 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Louise Erdrich →
Related Quotes
"There is very little said about how repetitious grief is. (p64)"
"All of our actions have in their doing the seed of their undoing. (p59)"
"Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow."
"Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life."
"In order to purify yourself, you have to understand yourself, Father Trais went on. Everything out in the world is al…"
"We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or mat…"
"Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would …"
"Any judge knows there are many kinds of justice—for instance, ideal justice as opposed to the best-we-can-do justice,…"
"When we're young, we think we are the only species worth knowing. But the more I come to know people, the better I li…"
"The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of revisions to family history. (p29)"