Louise Erdrich Quotes

When you start suppressing feelings at an early age, it hurts you down the road. Full expression of anger and pain is very important.

'Miss Jackson' is about something that actually happened to me when I was younger. I hadn't really talked about it, and I felt that if I didn't, I would keep thinking about it; it would drive me crazy.

My parents broke up when I was six. Before, I was a very active, naughty child, but after my father left me, I stopped talking. I became very good at hiding my emotions. I felt so ashamed of telling others that I didn't have a father, because that was not common in the 1960s.

If you don't find some way to discuss what's going on inside you, it can come out in other ways that are self-destructive.

It's maybe hard to believe, but as a kid I really had a lot of self-doubts. My father was very ill - he was an alcoholic - so there were a lot of things that built up for me. And because I was going to a Catholic school in a small German town, a lot of it was suppressed. I was angry and didn't know how to get it out.

I sublimate different parts of my personality through my characters. Which is worrying, as some of them can be a bit nasty. I'm pleased the stuff on the page isn't inside me any more.

I just put my anger and resentment into basketball. Even the stuff from my childhood.

I have survivor's remorse.

I suppress stress to the point where it will force its way through my skin in the form of a large angry pimple because that's the only channel it has.

I was a fat kid. I can laugh now. But I got teased about being an Oompa Loompa and stuff like that.

When your name is Twinkle, you are a bookworm, and a fat child, then you have to be ready to be made fun of. As a child, I used my fists a lot, but then the tongue seemed like a better option. So I started using words as a sword to jab fun at myself.

I was a happy-go-lucky gothic girl who had an optimistic spirit cos I was suffering a lot at home.

My dad had been in the second world war, had electric shock treatment, suffered from anxiety and was abusive to my mum. I kept a lid on my feelings at school but, when I was 18, dropped out of everything and couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed.

I think that definitely any trauma - whether it's childhood or later in life - affects you negatively, especially when it's suppressed, but there's so much of us which is already in place.

It's impossible to exorcise the darkness out of you. We can pretend it's not there until something bursts.

It's very important for me to do things like talk therapy. That's where you begin to see the walls that your illness has put up as a way to protect yourself... but of course, those walls also keep us from getting to the truth of things.

My demons are not that easy to shake.

Unhappy and unsettled childhood helps in writing.

A lot of times, we don't seek the help. If you come from a family where you might have been abused, a lot of times, particularly with males, regardless of what the ethnic background is there's a sense of like 'Just keep it moving.'

I'm an emotional gangster. I cry once every month.

I know that life is full of lessons to be learned, and my children will have to learn their own, but I hope I have broken the cycle of shame and fear that plagued my childhood.

I used to suppress all my feelings, and it doesn't do anybody any good.

Part of the problem with America is that letting go of emotions is viewed as a weakness, but it's my strength. That enabled me to write my songs.

It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware.

Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.