Leif Enger > Quotes

“Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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

“What else exhausts like sustained deception?”
― 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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“We and the world, my children, will always be at war.
Retreat is impossible.
Arm yourselves.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like A River

“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, Peace Like a River

“Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“I prayed the Lord would sort (my prayers) out and answer as needed. Above all that he would hurry.”
― 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, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Pride is the rope God allows us all.”
― Leif Enger

“....her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others.”
― 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, Peace Like a River

“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

“Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?”
― Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“...for his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace.”
― Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“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, So Brave, Young, and Handsome

“Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“A line only gets grace when it curves, you know.”
― Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“Listening to Dad's guitar, halting yet lovely in the search for phrasing, I thought: Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― 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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“Sometimes it seems every woman I meet is more than a match for me.”
― Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“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.”
― 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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“I felt laden. Air itself has weight and mass, and Kansas had the most air of anywhere I'd ever been.”
― Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, golden and so clean it quivers.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“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. I'm sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. 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 order 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. My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear mirales 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

“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

“From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and air to fill them with... p 1”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like A River

“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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“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, So Brave, Young and Handsome

“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, Peace Like a River

“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, Peace Like a River

“Nothing could quiet a happy crowd of kids like Mr. Holgren's unannounced appearance -- he loved superintending; he was made for it. So when he marched in that morning with a determined look on his face, we froze. Boys and girls recognize sinister as handily as dogs do. Here it was. My best guess now is he'd got it in his head to try "relating" to us -- but when he produced a paper pilgrim's hat from behind his back and put it on his own head, I think we all nearly bolted.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“...as long as we have the choice to read what we want, I suspect Twain and Homer and the rest will always be with us. The stoutest old writers ebb and flow in popularity; tastes and political correctness and educational trends also ebb and flow, and we have a tendency to embrace the short view because it makes better news stories. So the joy of literature may not be at a high water mark right now, and yet you can walk into the Target store of your choice and pick up Catcher in the Rye. Beauty floats, I guess, along with sorrow and hope. (http://www.wab.org/events/allofroches...)”
― 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, Peace Like a River