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...

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

Literacy: Blessing? Or curse?

Where had he been? Drinking, obviously. Then she started cataloging all the ways he was worthless. On fool impulse, as his most potent available argument against Lily, Bud stuck his hands into his coat pockets...

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

He floated along thinking he would like to love the world as it was, and he felt a great deal of accomplishment for the occasions when he did, since the other was so easy.

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...

One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as...

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...

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...

Ruby said there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular had made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away...

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.

I’m ruined beyond repair, is what I fear…And if so, in time we’d both be wretched and bitter.” “I know people can be mended. Not all, and some more immediately than others. But some can...

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...

She had been struck by the figure of a woman’s back in a mirror. She stopped and looked. The dress the figure wore was the color called ashes of roses, and Ada stood, held in...

I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy...

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...

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

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

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...

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.

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!

Our worst pain is confined within our own skin.

And it was pointless…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...

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!

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...

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...

Inman’s only thought looking on the enemy was, “Go home.

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

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.

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