Quotes from Leif Enger

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 this world.

Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.

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.

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

Good advice is a wise man's friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave.

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed--though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.

You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.

Memory's oldest trick is convincing us of its accuracy.

Where do you think you're going?" Dr. Nokes demanded…. "What do you have for directions?" And Dad… said, "I have the substance of things hoped for. I have the anticipation of things unseen

What else exhausts like sustained deception?

Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.

Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.

It is one thing to say you're at war with this whole world and stick your chest out believing it, but when the world shows up with it's crushing numbers and its predatory knowledge, it is another thing completely.

This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone's nice surprise.

We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day.

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.

When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.