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 c….

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

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….

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….

Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life..

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..

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..

It always helps me connect with characters, to think about what music they respond to.

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

If I had to give up reading or give up listening to music, I suspect I'd stick with the music..

We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day as identical.

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 ….

There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred..

I was 46 when 'Cold Mountain' came out. I was settled. We had a nice house in Raleigh and a horse farm..

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 an….

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..

When everything is immediately available and infinitely reproducible, nothing is valuable..

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 desperat….

...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 lit….

Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless..

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it..