Charles Frazier Quotes

Literacy: Blessing? Or curse?

I'm ruined beyond repair, is what I fear...And if so, in time we'd both be wretched and bitter."
"I know people can be mended. Not all, and some more immediately than others. But some can be. I don't see why not you."
"Why not me?

The flame of urgent coupling burned hottest against the woman, no matter how romantic and high and heartsick the anguish of the man might be pitched in retrospect.

His spells portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, contstantly under attack and in need of stength, always threatening to die inside you. Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies.

So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!

They say this war is a cloud over the land! But they make the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, ‘Shit, it’s raining!

It's a good thing war is so terrible or else we'd get to liking it too much.

Inman's only thought looking on the enemy was, "Go home.

He floated along thinking he would like to love the world as it was, and he felt a great deal of accomplishment for the occasions when he did, since the other was so easy.

Our worst pain is confined within our own skin.

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

Still, Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace.

Musicians add to songs and they evolve: For as was true of human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride. p. 380