Quotes from Leif Enger

When a person is gripped by a fugue or idea you can't just busy him out of it, not for long anyway.

I wanted to hear about many small things, the smaller the better. I wanted to tell her small things in return.

Burdens accrue in isolation.

A perilous beautiful move, choosing to throw yourself at the future, even if it means one day coming down in the sea.

But all I can say is our future is airborne. I never saw a winter so blue. We all dream of finding but what's wrong with looking? When the sun rises we'll know what to do.

See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell; The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy; Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy; Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt; Dakota by Kathleen Norris; and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Parades always made me cringe—the sight of so many people lockstepping along, chests out, elbows pumping, seemed to denote an unearned pride or a humiliating need for attention. I have generally found something else to do, if any parades were nearby.

I just liked it better when Mr. Andreeson was the enemy, I complained finally.

I suspect it's the only photo ever taken of Charlie, the one where he's braced up dead and on display. They used to prop fellows like that in store windows for a week or two, something the Chamber of Commerce thought up to bring customers downtown

It went to show that anyone could deliver good news, including a person like Martin Andreeson, even if he wasn't doing so purposefully, and even if he was the king of pukes in most respects.

Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.

It is 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 the world.

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

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

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

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.

We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.

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.

Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.

Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week--a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards.