It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of fantastic suffering. - Louise Erdrich

The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.

Delphine witnessed awful things occurring to other humans. Worse than that, she was powerless to alter their fate. It would be that way all her life — disasters, falling like chairs all around her, falling so close they disarranged her hair, but not touching her.

So many things in the world have happened before. But it's like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first. To be a son of a father was like that. In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt smallness, how the earth divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt the stars. I felt them roosting on my shoulders with his hand. The moon came up red and warm. (p271)