Home > Work > So Brave, Young, and Handsome
1 " 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! "
― Leif Enger , So Brave, Young, and Handsome
2 " Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing? "
3 " Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all. "
4 " 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. "
5 " A line only gets grace when it curves, you know. "
6 " 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. "
7 " I felt laden. Air itself has weight and mass, and Kansas had the most air of anywhere I'd ever been. "
8 " Sometimes it seems every woman I meet is more than a match for me. "
9 " 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. "
10 " ...for his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace. "
11 " 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 "
12 " 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. "
13 " In times of dread it’s good to have an old man along. An old man has seen worse. "
14 " A cowboy doesn't ask for much, that's my observation. A flashy ride, a pretty girl, momentary glory... "
15 " Love is a strange fact-it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no since at all. "
16 " He stood and nodded at the great whitening sky. “We’re sure small, wouldn’t you say? Takes the onus off, somehow. "
17 " 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 "
