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"The truth was, Olga said, that neither of us was right—there are no real events in the midst of the eighteenth of November. It's like a dream, and there's nothing you can do. The question is how to prepare yourself to wake up."

"Do women leave under the cover of darkness? Do they slip into the night alone while the children are sleeping? Do they tiptoe out at first light and close the door behind them without a sound? Do they take their leave with a glance at the town's name, a blue sign at a nearly deserted station? I don't know, but I don't see anyone waving."

I didn't like how he divided the world into two piles, one for each of us, when the world was full of what was shared...Men's thoughts had passed through women's minds, women's thoughts had been shared with men, and men had passed them on to other men, who had then shared them with women. All of them filtered through each other. I didn't understand why he wanted to split the world in two...It was all interwoven.

"Who told Homer his first stories? How could we possibly know which stories had been crafted by men when everything small children heard came from women? The first author in history, or at least the first one we know of, was a woman. Everyone knows that, I said. He didn't, he said. He had filled our glasses with water, and I took a sip or two before admitting that I couldn't remember her name."

"She had noticed that she took more pictures when the seasons lived up to our expectations of them: pictures of snow in winter and bright sunshine in summer, a hot day on the beach, red and yellow leaves and a child in rain boots in autumn—and always snaps with sandals in summer, even in summers when most days were rain boot days. As if we had templates for the seasons and when everything fits we take a picture."

"But when the older of the two dogs died the speckled one no longer wanted to sleep beside him on the bed. It was grieving, he said. It was inconsolable. He tried to get one dog to come up onto the bed, wanting to comfort it, he thought it liked him, that he was its best friend.

He wasn't. The dog had lain on his bed because it was the closest it could get to the other dog."

"To be honest, if anyone is going to get Asin, it should be Ninaatig. It's just that you certainly do not know what you've lost until it's gone and Ninaatig still has the birds[...]This is so normal for Ninaatig that it is Ninaatig, and so they can't imagine a reality without it.

"Unlike Asin. Asin lives with the hole and is driven to fill it."

"Mindimooyenh believes this is the function of ceremony. Ceremony strengthens the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and empathy. Ceremony is not just one big dumping ground of sharing circle. It is not a performance. It is not even necessarily designed to make you feel better. It is exercise."