214 Quotes by Charles Frazier

Whether you pick well or poorly, the act of choosing carries grief. Leaves you wondering, years later, what life might have been had you chosen differently. . . . Or even wishing you'd simply paused, taken a long, deep breath. Not allowed the personal moment and the pattern of your family and your stupid culture to shove you two-handed from behind, forcing you to stumble unbalanced into the future

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

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.

Had she been an old woman who long ago in her youth sang beautifully, one might have said that she had learned to use the diminished nature of her voice to maximum effect, that it was a lesson in how to live with damage, how to make peace with it and use it for what it can do. But she was not an old woman.

The road, they said, was a place apart, a country of its own ruled by no government but natural law, and its one characteristic was freedom.

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.

… she claimed it’s a sign of God’s mercy that He won’t let us remember the reddest details of pain. He knows the parts we can’t bear and won’t let our minds render them again. In time, from disuse, they pale away. At least such was her thinking. God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back.

But Luce takes the attitude, when you start fretting the day-by- day you lose track of the long view. And the long view is, they need to learn to speak for themselves and do the best they can. For now, if they bag their own lunch and it's pickles and prunes and they say the words, all you do is put both thumbs up and say, Good job.

At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring.