"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

"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 (Peace Like a River)

"Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic."
— Leif Enger (Peace Like a River)

"What else exhausts like sustained deception?"
— Leif Enger

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

"....her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others."
— 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 (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

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

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

"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

"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)

"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)

""Looking back, I have to laugh. You know why Martin Bligh was strenuous? 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

"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)

"Dewey Hall was the only building on campus not made of brick, and the tornado came for it in absolute maturity, no umbilical growth now but a strong slender lady hip-walking through campus--past the science hall, past English, jumping Old Main and the library with deliberate grace and lighting on the shallow rookf of Dewey, where Dad toiled alone."
— Leif Enger (Peace Like a River)