Leif Enger quotes:

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.

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.

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

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

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.

Pride is the rope God allows us all.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Once torched by truth...a little thing like faith is easy.

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.

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.

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.

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

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.

What else exhausts like sustained deception?

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

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

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.

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

Routine is worry's sly assassin.