When small towns find they cannot harm the strangest of their members, when eccentrics show resilience, they are eventually embraced and even cherish… - Louise Erdrich

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

And that was where the whiskey got hold of her. As it has with so many of us, even myself, the liquor sneaked up and grabbed her, got into her mind and talked to her, fooled her into thinking she was thinking for herself when really it was the whiskey thinking whiskey thoughts. (p75)

Someone had cleared that hillside once to make an orchard that had fallen into ruin and was now only twisted silver branches and split trunks. I sat there and continued to watch the sky as, out of nowhere, great solid-looking clouds built hot stacks and cotton cones. I was sixteen years old.