"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 I'm going back.
Make of it what you will."

"Fair is whatever God wants to do."

"One thing I was wasn't waiting for was a miracle. I don't like to admit it. Shouldn't that be the last thing you release: the hope that the Lord God, touched in His heart by your particular impasse among all others, will reach down and do that work that none can accomplish--straighten the twist, clear the oozing sore, open the lungs? Who knew better than I that such holy stuff occurs? Who had more reason to hope? And yet regarding my own wasted passages it seemed a prospect I could no longer admit."

"You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine."

"I suppose that moment had been gaining on us, secretly, like a new piece of music played while you sleep. One day you hear it---a strange song, yet one you know by heart."

"For heartening sights nothing beats a well-packed picnic basket with a clasped lid. One so full it creaks. One carried by a lady you would walk on tacks for."

"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 as well."

"It sure 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 its crushing numbers and its predatory knowledge, it is another thing completely."

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

"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, excerpts from "Peace Like a River"