Erdrich

I've read some Erdrich before and have always found her charming, so I took the advantage of getting to hear her speak at PLA last week. I found the letters she shared charming, and I have one of her books (about the first year of motherhood) on order through the library system. In the meantime, I've been thinking a lot about a quote from one of her own books that she shared:

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)