Quotes from Leif Enger

You can't explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn't even ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work.

Listening to Dad's guitar, halting yet lovely in the search for phrasing, I thought: Fair is whatever God wants to do.

But the ruinous thing about growing up is that we stop creating mysteries where none exist, and worse, we usually try to deconstruct and deny the genuine mysteries that remain. We argue against God, against true romance, against loyalty and self-sacrifice.

I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, golden and so clean it quivers.

You can't kill history. You can't shoot it with a bullet and watch it recede into whatever lies outside of memory. History is tougher than that—if it's going to die, it has to die on its own

At first I thought common nouns were hardest hit, coffee and doorway and so on, but it soon became clear that the missing were mostly adjectives.

When I woke in the dark I was smiling - it's a happy thing to brace for a visit from old friend Envy who then for some reason never shows up.

In times of dread it's good to have an old man along. An old man has seen worse.

for his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace.

Is it hubris to believe we all live epics?

But I shook my head. I just couldn't go with him. Nor could I tell him it wasn't his public mistreatment that stole my breath and blocked my tongue; it was something too mean to explain. It was the fact that Chester the Fester, the worst man I'd ever seen, even worse in his way than Israel Finch, got a whole new face to look out of and didn't even know to be grateful; while I, my father's son, had to be still and resolute and breathe steam to stay alive.

From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and air to fill them with... p 1

It's peculiar, to reach your destination," he told me. "You think you'll arrive and perform the thing you came for and depart in contentment. Instead you get there and find distance still to go.

Whenever I didn't know what to write next, I put a swift river in front of his horse and sent the two of them across!

You are no failure, on a river. The water moves regardless - for all it cares, you might be a minnow or a tadpole, a turtle on a beavered log. You might be nothing at all.

He had a hundred merry crinkles at his eyes and a long-haul sadness in his shoulders.

Ann rolled her eyes. She had a marvelous eye roll, refined through long discipline, precise as acupuncture.

Nothing could quiet a happy crowd of kids like Mr. Holgren's unannounced appearance -- he loved superintending; he was made for it. So when he marched in that morning with a determined look on his face, we froze. Boys and girls recognize sinister as handily as dogs do. Here it was. My best guess now is he'd got it in his head to try relating to us -- but when he produced a paper pilgrim's hat from behind his back and put it on his own head, I think we all nearly bolted.

I experienced an unspooling sense of freedom—genuine antagonism is something I've rarely encountered, and it felt good to respond with honesty instead of obsequious scraping.

Although saying this, I realize it may have been illusory. Memory's oldest trick is convincing us of its accuracy.

A cowboy doesn't ask for much, that's my observation. A flashy ride, a pretty girl, momentary glory...

I breathe deeply, and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers. Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.

He stood and nodded at the great whitening sky. "We're sure small, wouldn't you say? Takes the onus off, somehow.

There is no better sound than whom you adore when they are sleepy and pleased