|
a98e37c
|
Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
9d9008b
|
Fair is whatever God wants to do.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
c6f47f7
|
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 |
|
45f5ed1
|
We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
dfc285c
|
I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
6403ecf
|
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 |
|
929edfd
|
Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
b552193
|
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 |
|
cf51f28
|
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 |
|
ff0e5d1
|
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.
|
|
scripture
|
Leif Enger |
|
44b9e49
|
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 |
|
dd70c24
|
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 |
|
550a574
|
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 |
|
f56fb47
|
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 |
|
5f2b5d7
|
Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
6f79efb
|
Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
e57a48e
|
So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
a57bddc
|
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 |
|
5a3d422
|
Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
dc5c390
|
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 |
|
0621da9
|
When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
24155a1
|
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.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
c789886
|
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 des..
|
|
kids
gas
rhyme
|
Leif Enger |
|
6ad1a5f
|
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 |
|
5ba3ca2
|
Memory's oldest trick is convincing us of its accuracy.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
cf1dd63
|
Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.
|
|
warmth
|
Leif Enger |
|
651f6b3
|
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 |
|
cc38b90
|
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"
|
|
wrongdoing
forgiveness
|
Leif Enger |
|
d93f819
|
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 |
|
6f0413a
|
A line only gets grace when it curves, you know.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
81e1053
|
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..
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
ad9d505
|
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 |
|
9ac0919
|
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 |
|
289cf0d
|
I felt laden. Air itself has weight and mass, and Kansas had the most air of anywhere I'd ever been.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
a71fb4c
|
Once torched by truth... a little thing like faith is easy.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
a72282c
|
I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, golden and so clean it quivers.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
8056b01
|
You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sin, you know, and cry tears doing it that are genuine as any.
|
|
tears
sin
|
Leif Enger |
|
7980494
|
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 |
|
db16665
|
for his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
d1c0619
|
A person never knows what is next--I don't anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.
|
|
unexpected
|
Leif Enger |
|
6691cc8
|
Sometimes it seems every woman I meet is more than a match for me.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
0e8d00f
|
I breathe deeply, and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers. 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 |
|
916090f
|
Yes, yes sir--routine is worry's sly assassin.
|
|
|
Leif Enger |
|
64917ee
|
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 |