Quotes from Leif Enger

I'm still fairly far reduced. I may never be unabridged again.

His coat was open wing and wing but he was radiant with talk, and the wind blew over his big besmirched cheeks and exposed earlobes with no effect. He was like a small, hot, talkative planet.

I sighed. Don't let anyone tell you that looking out for your vulnerable is less than a full-time deal.

A person can't regret honesty any more than other unavoidables—a plain face or a poor history.

quixotically.

Well, we all hold history differently inside us. For Swede such episodes retold themselves into a seamless and momentous narrative; she had a Homeric grasp on the significance of events, and still does; one of her recent letters asks, Is it hubris to believe we all live epics? (Perhaps it is, but I suspect she's not actually counting on me for an answer.)

I saw it happening but could not stop it. Humility came to me too late. I'm a living proverb; learn from me.

Existence is great but don't read so much into it.

Could a person believe so strongly one way, yet take the opposite route?

film contains over two miles of celluloid so is quite heavy, properly so since it contains the labor of hundreds of people over many months to produce your two hour vacation.

was working the cold up

He had an advanced capacity for hatred. It came to him easily and fully formed.

He was correct about the language, though. Within weeks certain prodigal words started filtering home. They came one at a time or in shy small groups. I remember when sea-kindly showed up, a sentimental favorite, followed by desiccated and massive. Brusque appeared all by itself, which seemed apt; merry and boisterous arrived together. This would be a good time to ask for your patience if I use an adjective too many now and again—even now, some years on, they're still returning.

His sadness seemed complete. It had left him nothing, no proper enjoyment, no Saturday mornings. Sadness wore him like a tailored suit.

At that moment there was nothing—no valiant history or hopeful future—half worth my sister's pardon. Listening to Dad's guitar, halting yet lovely in the search for phrasing, I thought: Fair is whatever God wants to do.

Dad and Roxanna were talking lightly in the way adults do who've just shifted gears to accommodate children—an infuriating tone for kids attempting to sound the future.

You needed only pliers and a crescent wrench and the sense of a common farm duck, "all of which," Rune said, "my uncle possessed.

We all dream of finding but what's wrong with looking?

And now, because a story is told for all, an admonition to the mindsick: Be careful whom you choose to hate. The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough, if you could but see it, to melt you into jelly. Beware those who reside beneath the shadow of the Wings.

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.

education, had never respected the glowing objective of perfect attendance (a goal set for kids, he said, "by adults with ruined imaginations").

It's one thing to be sick of your own infirmities, and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in this world.

In one extremely satisfactory dream I was the rain and fell with merry violence on streets and asphalt rooftops...

Don't fear occasional ghosts. Every day my mind suggests two or three impossible things.