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39870e8
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From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and air to fill them with... p 1
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Leif Enger |
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8945f8b
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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."
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Leif Enger |
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62d6c55
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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!
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Leif Enger |
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0b2cff7
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He had the heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry
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Leif Enger |
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8f63c39
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What makes a Samaritan good is the possibility of the lunge.
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Leif Enger |
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ddacb6f
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This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone's nice surprise.
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Leif Enger |
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915a004
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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 hea..
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Leif Enger |
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09f2c79
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Is it hubris to believe we all live epics?
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Leif Enger |
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f99f122
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Listening to Dad's guitar, halting yet lovely in the search for phrasing, I thought: Fair is whatever God wants to do.
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Leif Enger |
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d2c7cf6
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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.
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Leif Enger |
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3ac097b
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It seemed necessary just then to touch base with the Lord. Shutting my eyes, I leaned into the horse. I prayed in words for a little while . . . and then language went away and I prayed in a soft high-pitched lament any human listener would've termed a whine. We serve a patient God. . . . Andreeson, who I'd despised, now appeared to my mind as he might've to a worried brother. Talk about an unwelcome change. There in the cold, curled agains..
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Leif Enger |
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fef8bf3
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In times of dread it's good to have an old man along. An old man has seen worse.
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Leif Enger |
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964c25d
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I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and rune too, even though he would've offered the string to Leer, just as I had. Thinking it over I became a bit less angry, and more proud of the kite itself: it had refused to be flown by Leer one moment longer. It broke the line and caught the next gust out of town. A perilo..
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Leif Enger |
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1297919
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If you can't talk sense, don't talk at all.
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Leif Enger |
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a1238d0
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Sleep that day was a warm pool in which I dove and stayed, sporadically lifting my head to sense the world.
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Leif Enger |
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b35f22d
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Once torched by truth, a little thing like faith is easy.
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Leif Enger |
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89bccc6
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A cowboy doesn't ask for much, that's my observation. A flashy ride, a pretty girl, momentary glory...
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Leif Enger |
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d7732df
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They came one at a time or in shy small groups. I remember when sea-kindly showed up, a sentimental favorite, followed by desiccated and massive. Brusque appeared all by itself, which seemed apt; merry and boisterous arrived together. This would be a good time to ask for your patience if I use an adjective too many now and again--even now, some years on, they're still returning. I'm just so glad to see them.
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Leif Enger |
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65303fc
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Love is a strange fact-it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no since at all.
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Leif Enger |
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13e563f
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He had a hundred merry crinkles at his eyes and a long-haul sadness in his shoulders.
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Leif Enger |
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a18c2a8
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it's difficult to do productive work and fume simultaneously--the labor dissipates your righteous steam--so
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Leif Enger |
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20f66ce
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How could we not believe the Lord would guide us? How could we not have faith? For the foundation had been laid in prayer and sorrow. Since that fearful night, Dad has responded with the almost impossible work of belief. He had burned with repentence as though his own hand had fired the gun. He had laid up prayer as if with a trowel.
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faith
prayer
repentence
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Leif Enger |
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2459f99
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Don't you ever doubt it?" Davy asked. And in fact I have. And perhaps will again. But here is what happens. I look out the window at the red farm--for here we live, Sara and I, in a new house across the meadow, a house built by capable arms and open lungs and joyous sweat. Maybe I see our daughter, home from school, picking plums or apples for Roxanna; maybe one of our sons. reading on the grass or painting an upended canoe. Or maybe Sara c..
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Leif Enger |
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b9a68e8
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My weary old ground was broken and watered, and what sprang up was a generalized longing.
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Leif Enger |
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7c4c273
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I was drawn on. Conscious now that something needed doing, I moved ever higher on the land. Here entering an orchard of immense and archaic beauty. I say orchard: The trees were dense in one place, scattered in another, as though planted by random throw, but all were heavy trunked and capaciously limbed, and they were fruit trees, every one of them. Apples, gold-skinned apricots, immaculate pears. The leaves about them were thick and cool a..
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Leif Enger |
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09f455b
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The evidence of my life lay before me, and I was unconvinced.
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Leif Enger |
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ca38537
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Do you know who is up at four in the morning? Dairy farmers. Paperboys. Lunatics.
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Leif Enger |
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7c55d82
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I experienced an unspooling sense of freedom--genuine antagonism is something I've rarely encountered, and it felt good to respond with honesty instead of obsequious scraping.
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Leif Enger |
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6296da5
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Many a night I woke to the murmur of paper and knew he was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James--oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.
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Leif Enger |
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a99be49
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You know how it is--you grow up with a story all your life, it can transmute into something you neither question nor particularly value. It's why we have such bad luck learning from mistakes.
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Leif Enger |
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620662a
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He stood and nodded at the great whitening sky. "We're sure small, wouldn't you say? Takes the onus off, somehow."
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Leif Enger |
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cc85e7a
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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.
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god
heaven
paradise
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Leif Enger |
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08196b1
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Avoiding my eyes he said a rumor had started that I didn't make it, that I died in the lake, so he drove out to where it happened and sure enough someone had hung a twist of flowers on the torn fence. Carnations and baby's breath. There was a white plastic cross and a laminated photo saying, "Virgil Wander RIP." While he poked around, a little scorched-haired lady arrived in a Chevy pickup and marched to the brink with a rosary. When Tom re..
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Leif Enger |
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4bd193e
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People fear miracles because they fear being changed--though ignoring them will change you also.
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Leif Enger |
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5c5217a
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Once torched by truth, Swede wrote years later, a little thing like faith is easy.
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Leif Enger |
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9002eb2
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Good advice is a wise man's friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave.
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Leif Enger |
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7d0b116
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is worry's sly assassin.
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Leif Enger |
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015ebd3
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Make of that what you will.
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Leif Enger |
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84ade96
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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?"
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Leif Enger |
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e5c0992
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It's possible to perceive what is coming and still be dumbfounded when it happens.
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Leif Enger |
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f3dacea
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Not confidence--I understand confidence. What he had was knowledge.
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Leif Enger |
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2017cf9
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Oh, his speed was no shock--speed was never Alec's problem. It was his precision that astonished. Because listen: How many pitchers in any league have a fastball with its own nickname? And what kind of fastball earns the name Mad Mouse? I will tell you: the kind that twists in crackling without one notion where it's going. The kind you don't see but hear hissing to itself like the bottle rocket before the bang.
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pitching
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Leif Enger |
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67296b5
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Then Israel Finch got to his feet and pointed the light at Dolly. He told Tommy to hold her arms, and Tommy roared as if they were the funniest words in his reduced language. Realizing his cut wasn't mortal, Israel slapped Dolly across the mouth, told her she was in for deep regret now, boy, and reaching forth his strong smelly hands rent open the front of her sweater. That, Dolly said, is when she would've started to give up inside, had sh..
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Leif Enger |
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b1db8d5
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The firelight had restored his face to healthy color and she, all Frenchbraided, scarf unslung, resembled an opportunity missed by Rembrandt.
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Leif Enger |