Leif Enger Quotes & Sayings

Is it hubris to believe we all live epics? — Leif Enger

For his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace. — Leif Enger

Make of that what you will. — Leif Enger

was working the cold up — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

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

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. — Leif Enger

You said yourself they didn't hurt your girl."
Waiting, Davy asked, "How many times does a dog have to bite before you put him down? — Leif Enger

When did it come to Davy Land that exile is a country of shifting borders, hard to quit yet hard to endure, no matter your wide shoulders, no matter your toughened heart? — Leif Enger

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 — Leif Enger

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

I felt laden. Air itself has weight and mass, and Kansas had the most air of anywhere I'd ever been. — Leif Enger

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

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. — Leif Enger

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

Say what you like about melodrama, it beats confusion. The truth is we ought have a chance to say a little something when it's getting dark. We ought to have a closing scene. — Leif Enger

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

Before reaching Grassy Butte, though, Dad spied a farmhouse with two pumps in the drive and a red-and-white sign out front saying DALE'S OIL COMPANY. Another sign said CLOSED, but a light was on in the house and Dad pulled in, saying, "I believe we might prevail on Dale. What do you think?"
"Prevail on Dale," I repeated to Swede.
"To make a sale," she added.
"And if we fail, we'll whale on Dale
"
"Till he needs braille!"
"Will you guys desist?" Dad asked. — Leif Enger

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

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. — Leif Enger

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

And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my body until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant. — Leif Enger

Her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others. — Leif Enger

I prayed the Lord would sort (my prayers) out and answer as needed. Above all that he would hurry. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

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

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. — Leif Enger

Sometimes it seems every woman I meet is more than a match for me. — Leif Enger

Once torched by truth, Swede wrote years later, a little thing like faith is easy. — Leif Enger

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

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. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust? — Leif Enger

We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,
and bitterly wept as we bore him along.
For we all loved our comrade so brave, young and handsome,
we all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong.
The Cowboy's Lament — Leif Enger

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

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

Routine is worry's sly assassin. — Leif Enger

You never like it to happen, for something as hopeful and sudden as a January thaw to come to an end, but end it does, and then you want to have some quilts around. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

Not confidence - I understand confidence. What he had was knowledge. — Leif Enger

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. — 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 the world. — Leif Enger

A line only gets grace when it curves, you know. — Leif Enger

What else exhausts like sustained deception? — Leif Enger

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! — Leif Enger

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

Pride is the rope God allows us all. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

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

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. — Leif Enger

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

Fair is whatever God wants to do. — Leif Enger

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies. — Leif Enger

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 — Leif Enger

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

Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long. I have to think my mother felt something like that. — Leif Enger

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth. — Leif Enger

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. — Leif Enger

Someday, you know, we're going to be shown the great ledger of our recorded decisions-a dread concept you nonetheless know in your deepest soul is true. — Leif Enger