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I Met People When We Lived Down In Raleigh Who'd Ask Where I Grew Up, And I'd Say About Two Hours West Of Asheville, And They'd Say They Didn't Know There Was Any North Carolina Two Hours West Of Asheville. It Was In Many Ways An Isolated Place.

-Charles Frazier

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I Met People When

Charles Frazier

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I Met People When We Lived Down In Raleigh Who'd Ask Where I Grew Up, And I'd Say About Two Hours West Of Asheville, And They'd Say They Didn't Know There Was Any North Carolina Two Hours West Of Asheville. It Was In Many Ways An Isolated Place.

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From My Childhood, I Remember A Tiny Old Woman Named Mary, Made Pale And Almost Translucent By Time. Mary's Childhood Memories Extended Back To The Confusing And Violent Finale Of The Civil War, And She Told Stories Of Brutal Murders In Those Days And Refused To Name Some Of The Killers, As If Dead Men Might Still Be Prosecuted In The Late 1950s.

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.

It's A Good Thing War Is So Terrible Or Else We'd Get To Liking It Too Much.

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.

Thinking: This Journey Will Be The Axle Of My Life.

Marrying A Woman For Her Beauty Makes No More Sense Than Eating A Bird For Its Singing. But It's A Common Mistake Nonetheless.

Nothing Changes What Alreaday Happened. It Will Always Have Happened. You Either Let It Break You Down Or You Don't.

I've Never Been Very Attached To Genre Labels And Never Set Out Intentionally To Write Historic Fiction. Besides, What You Consider Historic Depends On How Far Back Your Memory Extends.

...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.

Publishers Give You Deadlines For Those Last Phases Of Production That Are Perfectly Comfortable For Them. So, To Whatever Extent I Can, I Like To Push Those To Give Me A Little More Time, And Make It So That They're As Uncomfortable As I Am.

When Everything Is Immediately Available And Infinitely Reproducible, Nothing Is Valuable.

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.

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.

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

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.

What I Wanted To Do Was Slap Him Down A Bit With Wit And Words. Grammar And Vocabulary As A Weapon. But What Kind Of World Would It Be If We All Took Every Opportunity Presented To Us To Assault The Weak?

[no] Matter What A Waste One Has Made Of One's Life, It Is Ever Possible To Find Some Path To Redemption, However Partial.

Verbs. All Of Them Tiring.

I Was 46 When 'cold Mountain' Came Out. I Was Settled. We Had A Nice House In Raleigh And A Horse Farm.

We Mark Some Days As Fair, Some As Foul, Because We Do Not See That The Character Of Every Day As Identical

He Tried To Name Which Of The Deadly Seven Might Apply, And When He Failed He Decided To Append An Eighth, Regret.

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.

One Time At The University Of Colorado, At A Faculty Dinner, This Professor Said To Me, 'well, My Goodness, A Boy From Appa-lay-chee-a With A Ph.d!' The Dinner Was In Her House. And I Said, 'my Grandparents Didn't Have Indoor Plumbing, But They Had More Books In Their House Than You Do.' I Was A Little Insulted By The Appa-lay-chee-a Business.

I Had Never Taken Creative Writing Classes. Hadn't Even Considered It.

All I Can Say Is That We Are Mistaken To Gouge Such A Deep Rift In History That The Things Old Men And Old Women Know Have Become So Useless As To Be Not Worth Passing On To Grandchildren.

Disease Is Nature's Revenge For Our Destructiveness.

Destructiveness

If I Had To Give Up Reading Or Give Up Listening To Music, I Suspect I'd Stick With The Music.

I've Always Thought Harper Lee Might Have Made A Great Decision. Much As You'd Like To Have More Books By Her, There's Something About Just One That's Kind Of Mysterious And Nice. On The Other Hand, The New York Gossip About Me Was That I'd Never Write Another Book. So I Thought, 'well, I Will Then.

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.

Needing And Getting Don’t Seem Likely To Match Up Any Time Soon... What Needs Doing Is Mine To Do.

A Lizard In The Spring - Hear His Darling Sing. A Bird With Wings To Fly - Go Back To His Darling Weep And Moan Till He Dies. A Mole In The Ground - Root A Mountain Down.

I've Lived Out West Some... I've Always Liked The High Plains Areas - Eastern Colorado, Eastern Wyoming, Western Nebraska.

There Was A Redemption Of Some Kind, He Believed, In Such Complete Fulfillment Of A Desire So Long Deferred.

It Always Helps Me Connect With Characters, To Think About What Music They Respond To

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.

But I Believe The Words Entered Me And Changed Me And Still Work In Me. The Words Eat Me And Sustain Me. And When I'm Dead And In A Box In The Dark Dark Ground, And All My Various Souls Have Died And I Am Nothing But Insensible Bones, Something In The Marrow Will Still Feel Yearning, Desire Persisting Beyond Flesh.

Writing Doesn't Come Real Easy To Me. I Couldn't Write A Novel In A Year. It Wouldn't Be Readable. I Don't Let An Editor Even Look At It Until The Second Year, Because It Would Just Scare Them. I Just Have To Trust That All These Scraps And Dead-ends Will Find A Way.

I Know I Don't Need Him, But I Think I Want Him.

Contentment Is Mostly A Matter Of Talking Yourself Into Believing That God Will Not Strike You Too Hard For Leaning In The Direction Of Your Hungers.

Or Maybe It Is Only That We Are So Habitually Inattentive That When Some Rare But Simple Geometry Grabs Us By The Shoulders And Shakes Us Into Consciousness, We Call Our Response Sacred.

Surely It Is A Sin To Reject The Few Gifts We Are Given. Be Happy In The Flash Of Time Granted To Us Or Hurt Forever.

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.

When All Else Is Lost And Gone Forever, There Is Yearning. Only Desire Trumps Time.

People Who Are Isolated Interest Me, Whether They Isolate Themselves Or Have Been Isolated By Circumstances.

You Never Know When Somebody Will Pull You To Them.

I Do The Same Things I Did When I Was 12 Years Old: I Ride Bikes, I Read Books, I Walk In The Woods. And I Listen To Music.

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 Together.

It Is Best Not To Study Too Much On Who Gets What They Deserve. It Can Lead To An Overly Complicated Interpretation Of God's Personal Attributes.

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.

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.

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.

So Of Course Time Is Necessary. But Nevertheless Damn Painful, For It Transforms All The Pieces Of Your Life - Joy And Sorrow, Youth And Age, Love And Hate, Terror And Bliss - From Fire Into Smoke Rising Up The Air And Dissipating On A Breeze.

I Remember My Father Checking On A Mountain Kid Who Hadn't Been Coming To School. My Father Had This Beautiful Harris Tweed Overcoat. He Came Back With A Knife Cut All Down One Side. The Parents Had Told Him It Was None Of His Business Why Their Son Wasn't Going To School.

The Past Is A Stronger Influence In The South. But I Think Everywhere You Have This Sense That The World Changes Faster Than You Can Accommodate Yourself To. Looking Back And Seeing How You Got Where You Are Is A Useful Way To Combat Disorientation.

She Always Carried A Book, Though, In Case She Needed To Read A Few Pages To Avoid Unwanted Conversation.

It Is A Bad Idea To Live Too Long. Few Carry It Off Well.

While Writing Cold Mountain, I Held Maps Of Two Geographies, Two Worlds, In My Mind As I Wrote. One Was An Early Map Of North Carolina. Overlaying It, Though, Was An Imagined Map Of The Landscape Jack Travels In The Southern Appalachian Folktales. He's Much The Same Jack Who Climbs The Beanstalk, Vulnerable And Clever And Opportunistic.

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 Argument That Life Did Not Just Happen.

Claim Your Space. Draw A Circle Of Light Around It. Push Back Against The Dark. Don't Just Survive. Celebrate.

I Met People When We Lived Down In Raleigh Who'd Ask Where I Grew Up, And I'd Say About Two Hours West Of Asheville, And They'd Say They Didn't Know There Was Any North Carolina Two Hours West Of Asheville. It Was In Many Ways An Isolated Place.

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?

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.

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.

Our Worst Pain Is Confined Within Our Own Skin.

The Sixties Were Different In An Isolated Place. We Got Two Television Channels If The Wind Was Blowing In The Right Direction. The Radio Stations Went Off At Sundown. Then You Picked Up Chicago And Heard The Teenage Music You Really Yearned For.

Well, I'm A Slow Writer. For Me, A Good Day Is A Page, Maybe A Page And A Half. I'd Love To Be More Efficient, But I Am Not.

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