"After a while, I asked who was in charge. Phil said God. I said that was the most terrifying thing I'd ever heard and he said, "Yeah, me too. That's… - Louise Erdrich

"Everything that ever happened to him in his life," she said, "all the things we said and did. Where did it go?" I didn't have an answer, so I just drove. Once I had caused a miracle by smashing my face on ice, but now I was an ordinary person. In the few miles we had left I could not help drawing out [her] strange idea in my mind. In my line of work I've seen thousands of brains that belonged to sheep, pork, steers. They were all gray lumps like ours. Where did everything go? What was really inside? The flat fields unfolded, the shallow ditches ran beside the road. I felt the live thoughts hum inside of me, and I pictured tiny bees, insects made of blue electricity, in a colony so fragile that it would scatter at the slightest touch. I imagined a blow, like a mallet to the sheep, or a stroke, and I saw the whole swarm vibrating out. Who could stop them? Who could catch them in their hands? (p203-4)

"...Society is like this card game here, cousin. We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can." (p263)

I hold his name close as my own blood and I will never let it out. I only spoke it that once so he would know he was alive.