Quotes from Leif Enger

Dewey Hall was the only building on campus not made of brick, and the tornado came for it in absolute maturity, no umbilical growth now but a strong slender lady hip-walking through campus--past the science hall, past English, jumping Old Main and the library with deliberate grace and lighting on the shallow rookf of Dewey, where Dad toiled alone.

How could we not believe the Lord would guide us? How could we not have faith? For the foundation had been laid in prayer and sorrow. Since that fearful night, Dad has responded with the almost impossible work of belief. He had burned with repentence as though his own hand had fired the gun. He had laid up prayer as if with a trowel.

If you can't talk sense, don't talk at all.

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

Sleep that day was a warm pool in which I dove and stayed, sporadically lifting my head to sense the world.

Oh, his speed was no shock—speed was never Alec's problem. It was his precision that astonished. Because listen: How many pitchers in any league have a fastball with its own nickname? And what kind of fastball earns the name Mad Mouse? I will tell you: the kind that twists in crackling without one notion where it's going. The kind you don't see but hear hissing to itself like the bottle rocket before the bang.

It's never been hard for me to fall in love, a quality that has yet to simplify one single day of my life.

My weary old ground was broken and watered, and what sprang up was a generalized longing.

A person never knows what is next—I don't, anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.

You know how it is—you grow up with a story all your life, it can transmute into something you neither question nor particularly value. It's why we have such bad luck learning from mistakes.

Nadine," said my voice. "You know how people daydream about the Bahamas, with the beaches and palm trees? I don't know if they really do, no doubt it's mostly advertising, but you're the island I think about.

The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.

A person never knows what is next -- I don't, anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.

Do you know who is up at four in the morning? Dairy farmers. Paperboys. Lunatics.

Once torched by truth, a little thing like faith is easy.

And who doesn't long for the door in the air.

I made a fist and held it out. It didn't look like much—not like a fist anyone would count on for protection. If war came seeking a person I loved, that undernourished fist was not going to be enough. I would have to put my whole body in the way

Large tomatoes and inner tranquillity are a bewitching combination.

SOON, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. VERY SOON! he added, clasping my hands; then, unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. The stream was singing aloud, and I heard him singing with it until he dropped away over the edge.

A veteran bystander to hard moments, I knew they went by quicker when you were unconscious.

My sister comes on like a box of nails, but her devotion to the mythic is profound.

telegram saying, "Existence is great but don't read so much into it.

She kept looking away then back to me, as though at a nice surprise. This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone's nice surprise.

Once traveling, it's remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else - ignorance, for example...Sure it's weak, but sometimes you'd rather just have a map.