Some Great Lines

I've been reading the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and I've been so struck with the beauty of the prose that I read with a pen in hand, underlining passages that capture me so that I can thumb through and reread them when I'm in the mood to be seized by good words. It's like a sunset or a beautiful landscape--a really great line or a phrase spreads through my chest, curls its fingers around my heart, and leaves me with the feeling of having been touched by something akin to magic. So here are some lines I have underlined so far:

"The mist corkscrewed away."

"...the smell of the dream hung around me; all sorts of lunar imaginings had hold of my brain."

"Nor the comfortable, fluttery feeling it gave me, as though someone had blown warm smoke through a hole in my center."

"So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies."

"Her fingers were the oldest part of her. I couldn't think of what to do with this information. I couldn't think of anything at all. The locusts neared. The bits of orange her fingers placed in my mouth were so ripe I barely chewed."

"It only felt powerful, like truth unhusked."

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

"And when did he know just what he'd done? We've wondered that, Swede and I. 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?"

"...as a picture of American underprivilege it could've won awards. You never saw people of more threadbare hopes, their eyes dustbowl-flat."

"...but getting closer we saw it was a crow after all, and dead. Struck by a car it lay all mashed to the road but for one free wing, which rose and fell by the gusts. It was a much more grievous sight than you'd think, a dead crow lying in the road out in the heart of noplace, and just before we reached it the wind brought up that wing again so it looked like a thing asking mercy."

May you take these words and carry them with you throughout this fine day...