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 o...
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...
His best talent had yet to be determined, unless you counted unrealized potential.
[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.
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.
She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.
Needing and getting don’t seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.
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....
If you are in the mountains alone for some time, many days at minimum, & it helps if you are fasting. The forest grows tired of its weariness towards you; it resumes its inner life and allows you to s...
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...
Then tell me of your long journey home, Ada said.Inman thought about it, but then he let himself imagine he had at last come out on the far side of trouble and had no wish to revisit it, so he told on...
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 bet...
Children don’t judge their own lives. Normal for them is what’s laid before them day by day. Judgment comes later.
A man's spirit could be torn apart and cease and yet his body keep on living...His spirit blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him...It seemed a poor swap to find...
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.
And all the ministers of the various types of local Baptists had declined to participate in retribution for Monroe’s failure to believe in a God with severe limitations on His patience and mercy.
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!
Survive long enough and you get to a far point in life where nothing else of particular interest is going to happen. After that, if you don’t watch out, you can spend all your time tallying your losse...
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...
Luce's new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent.