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2cf2840
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Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.
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Charles Frazier |
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be337ed
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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..
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war
love
separation
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Charles Frazier |
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3baf948
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He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.
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war
south
sin
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Charles Frazier |
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24aeb22
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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 be. I don't see why not you." "Why not me?"
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war
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Charles Frazier |
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0b8174a
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What you have lost will not be returned to you; it 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.
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Charles Frazier |
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2047c0d
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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!
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war
weather
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Charles Frazier |
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49af92f
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Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom. Not being bought and sold by some idiot employer, not having the moments of her days valued in fractions of a dollar by somebody other than herself.
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Charles Frazier |
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bdde674
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for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. 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 only left with your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not.
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Charles Frazier |
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7155659
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No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.
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Charles Frazier |
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64cd2f0
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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.
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Charles Frazier |
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3dbff22
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I know I don't need him, but I think I want him.
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Charles Frazier |
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d90a64d
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Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.
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Charles Frazier |
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c345314
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He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear space for something better.
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Charles Frazier |
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33acb0f
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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.
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Charles Frazier |
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fd6014e
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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 they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of Creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift, but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful ..
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Charles Frazier |
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feb1486
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Life can get fucked up fast when you try to be a pleaser. Because people won't ever be pleased, not even if you drop them ass-first into paradise. They like bitching too much.
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Charles Frazier |
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60487bb
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She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.
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Charles Frazier |
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0bb599d
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Verbs. All of them tiring.
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Charles Frazier |
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990cc05
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She wondered if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being.
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Charles Frazier |
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403a2b1
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That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on
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Charles Frazier |
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fe0ae04
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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 losses and gains in endless narrative. All you love has fled or been taken away. Everything fallen from you except the possibility of jolting and unforewarned memory springing out of the dark, rushing over you with the velocity of heartbreak. May wa..
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Charles Frazier |
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0254673
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It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.
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Charles Frazier |
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f9963d8
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And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life. Certainly neither she nor Inman were the people they had been the last time they were together. And she believed maybe she liked them both better now.
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Charles Frazier |
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830b1f9
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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!
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Charles Frazier |
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2e56034
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We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day as identical
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life
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Charles Frazier |
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81a1460
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Nothing changes what alreaday happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.
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Charles Frazier |
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b67b12a
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Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.
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Charles Frazier |
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6fa9210
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There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.
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Charles Frazier |
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c3225ae
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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.
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Charles Frazier |
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748c36e
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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 so that in time the song became a different thing from what it had been, barely recognizable in either tune or lyric. But you could not say the song had been improved, for as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added..
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music
songs
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Charles Frazier |
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4fe48f3
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You never know when somebody will pull you to them.
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Charles Frazier |
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d02dae6
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Mainly because people were what they were and you couldn't change them. most of the time, they couldn't change themselves, even if they were desperate to be somebody different from who they were. So, best keep your distance.
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Charles Frazier |
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8c47018
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No looking back. Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past having nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.
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Charles Frazier |
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67f392e
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But she couldn't dismiss easily his light touch with her. No pushing or pressing, none of that herding and corralling bullshit, unlike any of her old boyfriends. And maybe who you fell for and who you eventually loved wasn't rational, no matter how hard you tried to list pros and cons and sum the results. You couldn't think your way through it, not all the way. Maybe just the scent of somebody carried more weight than everything else put to..
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Charles Frazier |
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b662771
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At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring.
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Charles Frazier |
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f922624
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I consider it a mutual duty, that we owe to each other, to communicate in a spirit of the utmost frankness and candor. Let it ever be done with unlocked hearts.
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Charles Frazier |
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30162b8
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The man had asked, Why do you want sheep? The wool? Meat? Monroe's answer had been, For the atmosphere.
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Charles Frazier |
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91733c5
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she knew in her heart that nature has a preference for a particular order: parents die, then children die. But it was a harsh design, offering little relief from pain, for being in accord with it means that the fortunate find themselves orphaned.
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Charles Frazier |
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36e16d8
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Bleak as the scene was, though, there was growing joy in Inman's heart. He was nearing home; he could feel it in the touch of thin air on skin, in his longing to see the lead of hearth smoke from the houses of people he had known all his life. People he would not be called upon to hate or fear. He rose and took a wide stance on the rock and stood and pinched down his eyes to sharpen the view across the vast propect to one far mountain. It s..
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Charles Frazier |
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30305a2
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A distressingly large portion of the world doesn't do you any good whatsoever.
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Charles Frazier |
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35e1e32
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Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.
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Charles Frazier |
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c1b0843
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My opinion was that if hogs are biting you so often that you have to stop and make up a specific word for it, maybe lack of vocabulary is not your most pressing problem.
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Charles Frazier |
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97fa3c7
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If I had a brother in jail and one in Georgia, I'd try to bust the one out of Georgia first.
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Charles Frazier |
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e9d9f4c
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Needing and getting don't seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.
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Charles Frazier |