This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next. It gave him the sensation that he was tottering on the tip of a flagpole. He was poised on circumstance.

Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich

circumstance flagpole happenstance

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My grandfather was a persuasive man who made friends with people at every level of influence. In order to fight against our tribe's termination, he went to newspapers and politicians and urged them to advocate for our tribe in Washington. He also supported his family through the Depression as a truck farmer.

— Louise Erdrich

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[She also tempers emotion with wry perspective. A woman driven to infamy by passion cannot have the man she loves.] As women have found since love began, ... she found she could live.

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In our own beginnings, we are formed out of the body's interior landscape, For a short while, our mothers' bodies are the boundaries and personal geography which are all that we know of the world.

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— Louise Erdrich