Leif Enger

“I felt laden. Air itself has weight and mass, and Kansas had the most air of anywhere I'd ever been.”

“...for his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace.”

“A line only gets grace when it curves, you know.”

“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”

“A cowboy doesn't ask for much, that's my observation. A flashy ride, a pretty girl, momentary glory...”

“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 and stirred at my approach; touched with a finger, they imparted a palpable rhythm.It took a long while to traverse the orchard. I began to feel hungry but didn't pause; though all this fruit appeared perfectly available, I felt prodded to appear before the master. The place had a master! Realizing this, I know he was already aware of me - comforting and fearful knowledge. Still I wanted to see him. The farther I went the more I seemed to know or remember abut him - the way he'd planted this orchard, walking over the hills, casting seed from his hand. I kept moving.”

“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 learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.”

“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.”

“...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...)”

“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”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“He stood and nodded at the great whitening sky. “We’re sure small, wouldn’t you say? Takes the onus off, somehow.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 this world.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

“So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.”

“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.”

“Pride is the rope God allows us all.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Sometimes it seems every woman I meet is more than a match for me.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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!”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 comes into the room--my darling Sara--with Mr. Cassidy's beloved rolls on a steaming plate. Then 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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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!”