214 Quotes by Charles Frazier

We all reach a point where we would like to draw a line across time and declare everything on the far side null. Shed.

That’s just pain she said. It goes eventually. And when it’s gone, there’s no lasting memory. Not the worst of it anyway. It fades. Our minds aren’t made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It’s a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us.

I’ve had relatives so crooked they nearly went to prison, but if you have money you never actually go. They make you think it for a while, and that’s your punishment.

I sometimes imagine meeting my seventeen-year-old self. She’s still here inside me somewhere. Maybe one morning in the mirror, there she’ll be. I look at her with affection and understanding and hope. She sees me and backs away in horror while I try to explain why I made the choices I made.

And they did what lovers often do when they think the future stretches out endless before them as bright as on the noon of creation day: they talked ceaselessly of the past, as if each must be caught up on the other’s previous doings before they can move forward paired.

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

The instant passed so fast, and when that happens, it goes for good and all you have is a slow lifetime to speculate on revisions. Except time flows one way and drags us with it no matter how hard we paddle upstream.

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

Her need to shape memory into history.