Charles Frazier Quotes

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

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.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life.

All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.

A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

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

People who are isolated interest me, whether they isolate themselves or have been isolated by circumstances.

I do the same things I did when I was 12 years old: I ride bikes, I read books, I walk in the woods. And I listen to music.

It always helps me connect with characters, to think about what music they respond to

He was himself a case in point, and perhaps not a rare one, for his spirit, it seemed, had been burned out of him but he was yet walking.

We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day as identical

Needing and getting don’t seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.

My opinion was that if hogs are biting you so often that you have to stop and make up a specific word for it, maybe lack of vocabulary is not your most pressing problem.

That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on

What I'm certain I don't want is to find myself someday in a new century, an old bitter woman looking back, wishing that right now I'd had more nerve.

Surely it is a sin to reject the few gifts we are given. Be happy in the flash of time granted to us or hurt forever.

I've never been very attached to genre labels and never set out intentionally to write historic fiction. Besides, what you consider historic depends on how far back your memory extends.

Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.

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

Our worst pain is confined within our own skin.

It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.

If I had to give up reading or give up listening to music, I suspect I'd stick with the music.

I've lived out West some... I've always liked the High Plains areas - eastern Colorado, eastern Wyoming, western Nebraska.

Or maybe it is only that we are so habitually inattentive that when some rare but simple geometry grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us into consciousness, we call our response sacred.

There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.

Nothing changes what alreaday happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.

Disease is nature's revenge for our destructiveness.

Verbs. All of them tiring.

Contentment is mostly a matter of talking yourself into believing that God will not strike you too hard for leaning in the direction of your hungers.

When everything is immediately available and infinitely reproducible, nothing is valuable.

I was 46 when 'Cold Mountain' came out. I was settled. We had a nice house in Raleigh and a horse farm.

It is best not to study too much on who gets what they deserve. It can lead to an overly complicated interpretation of God's personal attributes.

I know I don't need him, but I think I want him.

You never know when somebody will pull you to them.

When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. Only desire trumps time.

[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.

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!

He said, I've been coming for you on a hard road. I'm never letting you go. Never.

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!

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

...I had always believed prayer ought to be conducted on our feet rather than on our knees, since God seems in all other departments of life to require us to stand upright and account for ourselves.

Back then, he'd have to leave at the end of August for the start of school, so the week before Labor Day became it's own tiny season of gloom, like a hundred Sunday nights crowded together.

Literacy: Blessing? Or curse?

His best talent had yet to be determined, unless you counted unrealized potential.

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

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.