{"author":"Charles Frazier","author_id":"Charles+Frazier","total_quotes":41,"quotes":[{"text":"In his mind, Inman likened the swirling paths of vulture flight to the coffee grounds seeking pattern in his cup. Anyone could be oracle for the random ways things fall against each other. It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat. The way Inman saw it, if a thing like Fredericksburg was to be used as a marker of current position, then many years hence, at the rate we're going, we'll be eating one another raw.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["future","oracle","superstition"],"id":16685,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"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.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["faith","soul"],"id":28890,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"Still, Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["peace","quiet","solitude","woods"],"id":34295,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["age","style","world "],"id":38685,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"She fit her head under his chin, and he could feel her weight settle into him. He held her tight and words spilled out of him without prior composition. And this time he made no effort to clamp them off. He told her about the first time he had looked on the back of her neck as she sat in the church pew. Of the feeling that had never let go of him since. He talked to her of the great waste of years between then and now. A long time gone. And it was pointless, he said, to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell, Inman said, for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you are. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you. Nevertheless, over all those wasted years, he had held in his mind the wish to kiss her on the back of her neck, and now he had done it. There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["grief","love","separation","war"],"id":42859,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"You try your best to love the world despite obvious flaws in design and execution and you take care of whatever needy things present themselves to you during your passage through it. Otherwise you're worthless.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["living-life","making-the-best-of-situations"],"id":51036,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"With the snow piling up outside, the warm dry cabin hidden in its fold of the mountain felt like a safe haven indeed, though it had not been such for the people who had lived there. Soldiers had found them and made the cabin trailhead to a path of exile, loss, and death. But for a while that night, it was a place that held within its walls no pain nor even a vague memory collection of pain.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["haven","native-americans","pain"],"id":52605,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls. Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["music","past-and-future"],"id":57439,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that's why we do dangerous and embarrassing things, as if simultaneously we're immortal and going to die tomorrow. And that's why we look back on that time so fondly from the dimmer years to come. Remembering the days when we were like Greek gods. Mighty and idiotic.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["hormones","remembering","reminiscence","teenagers","teens"],"id":62973,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"There in the highlands, clear weather held for much of the time. The air lacked its usual haze, and the view stretched on and on across rows of blue mountains, each paler than the last until the final ranks were indistinguishable from the sky. It was as if all the world might be composed of nothing but valley and ridge.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["blue-ridge-mountains","cold-mountain","inman","inspirational","nature","north-carolina"],"id":100751,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":41,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}