Through Black Spruce Quotes
"River water’s light like something between [Pepsi and ginger ale]. And brown Moose River water’s cold. Cold like living between two colours. Like living in this town."
"I used to fly a bush plane better with a few drinks in me. I actually believe my eyesight improved with whisky goggles on."
"As snow blinded my takeoff from the slick runway, I got the go-ahead with a warning from the Moosonee flight tower: harder snow coming."
"Me, I preferred the first option, that Mother Nature was one angry slut. She’d try and kill you first chance she got."
"My first crash ended good. My old friend Chief Joe flew out to me the next morning, found me by the smoky fire I’d kept burning all night."
"A wife who wanted children, the idea of a family to feed coming to us like a good sunrise on the horizon. I made my choices."
"It’s not like you can enrol at Northern College to learn what you need. Me, I pity your road. It’s lonely."
"I fancied myself a chief in an earlier life, a man of the people, leading them through troubled times, photographed like Sitting Bull, my profile stern in its wisdom."
"I was going to start jogging. 'You’re reacting to the violence perpetrated against you,' Chief Joe said."
"I remember calling Chief Joe one afternoon when it was bad, but he didn’t pick up. I tried Gregor, but he didn’t answer, either."
"We’re hunters and gatherers, though. Never in the same place for long."
"Experience is the most difficult of teachers because it gives the exam first, and the lessons second."
"We are all born innocent children. And we can maintain the innocence of children if that is what we choose."
"You have to come to the understanding, Will Bird, that you are no longer the handsome young creature you once were."
"Sex is important, but more importantly, you need someone to talk to once in a while."
"I will shoot you three and gut you like moose before you even know what happened to you."
"This town is a place of talkers. No one can know. Not even your friends. They are not strong enough for this. But you are. You are the son of a warrior."
"Sometimes when you are all alone in the bush, deep in winter, and the northern lights come, you can actually hear them."
"Once you got enough notes, maybe you can go arrest the fucker."
"When everything was gone, my money, my home, my family, I went back to hunting and fishing for a living."
"The world of high fashion is a tough one. But it can be a very lucrative one."
"If I was young again and had the chance, I would leave this place, too."
"There’s nowhere to go anymore. We can no longer live in the bush."
"I thought of my mother late that night, as I followed the moon’s path back home across the Moose River."
"I’ve learned to fly like a bird, me. I’ve become magic in my old age."
"I’m explaining to Gordon that the nibble of the trout won’t be much at all, just a slight tugging."
"You’ve got to drop that mistake with the sunglasses tonight, girlfriend."
"I’ve been an informant for the OPP for the last number of months."
"I feel caught in her sick aura and look down at myself, my body through the thin T-shirt."
"Maybe this is one of the great jokes of our people, one of our clan choosing not to eat in order to become skin and bones."
"Is it because I think of my sister so much in one day that this disease returns to threaten my body?"
"The city is an island, a twinkling iris below me."
"Suzanne wants to believe that these beasts can’t swim across big water, that they can’t cross borders."
"The water promises to cool. It pulls me down to it."
"I saved my money, me, and bought a case of Crown Royal rye."
"I never thought I would kill a man. But Marius was no longer a man."
"I whispered what was inside of me, did what my father taught me to do."
"I was leaner and feral, my gut growing smaller, my arms and chest getting used to the drag of the saw and the swing of the axe."
"I’m thinking about going back to make some cash modelling. Maybe go back to New York."
"I don’t want to take advantage of Soleil’s kindness."
"The fear worst of all is that I’m losing myself."
"Life accelerates. On a fast boat on black water, the fear all around me is of being caught."
"The fear is that where I am going is where my sister has ended."
"I watched Violet reach into her pocket and remove a small silver case."
"I lit a cigarette and peered over at the rifle in the blanket beside me."
"I’ve moved into your house. I hope you don’t mind."
"We smoked our cigarettes, and the old woman went back to their camp."
"Enough of a shore breeze to take the worst of the bugs away, and a perfect nesting ground for the geese."
"My sister and me. We saw a sasquatch here," the youngest one blurted. "Ever big! He was big and he ran into the woods by the creek."
"We will have so many geese it will sink our boat," the old woman spoke.
"Your granddaughters?" I asked in Cree. "Good girls," the old man answered.
"I knew your father," he said. "Most old ones on James Bay did. He was an old man already when I was young."
"You’re the one who doesn’t have a family anymore," the old woman said. "It makes sense to me that you don’t mind staying here through winter."
"It’s all right," I said, smiling at her. She smiled back in such a way that I thought maybe moshum was right.
"Did you already know I flew myself up here?" "Me, I’m old enough to know a lot of things, Sasquatch with Boots On."
"This was all. I looked around. The sod pile had been left alone and at least I’d still have the rest of my smoked trout and goose."
"He moves his hips again then, slowly, into me."
"I'm zipping across the ice road to Moose Factory on my ski-doo, faster than I should."
"You really are meant to be a healer, just like old Will here says."
"Speak now, people, he says. We are healing him with our vords!"
"I think they come to say goodbye to you, just in case."
"The water closer to shore babbles like children's voices."
"My best old trapline, I ran it near my tiny cabin."
"I hear water rushing not so far away, a big river's voice."
"The man I trusted, holding me in his arms, whispering those words into my head."
"I think he knows he does this, and it angers him more."
"I think of Henry Hudson and his son and where their bones might lay."
"The weather hadn’t settled, this cold before Christmas already like the freeze of February."