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

— Charles Frazier

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.

— Charles Frazier

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.

— Charles Frazier

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!

— Charles Frazier

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!

— Charles Frazier

They were both at such an age that they stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment.

— Charles Frazier

Unman's only thought looking on the enemy was, "Go home.

— Charles Frazier

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.

— Charles Frazier

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 and pulled out the many bundles of hundreds and threw them on the bedspread. If you were honest and stupid, you worked a couple of lifetimes for that kind of money, doled out by the hour in pocket-change amounts by as swipe bosses.

— Charles Frazier

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.

— Charles Frazier