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?
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the power of words and the ethics of using them as weapons against others.
Charles Frazier highlights the dilemma of using our verbal skills to undermine those who may be weaker. While the ability to craft words and grammar can be a powerful tool, he questions the morality of employing such talents to harm others, suggesting that the world would be worse if we chose to use our intellect to attack instead of uplift.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the impact of language in society.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The longing of my heart is a fairy portrait of myself: I want to be pretty; I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charms.
And I'll know my song well before I start singing
The sage acts without taking credit. He accomplishes without dwelling on it. He does not want to display his worth.
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
You desire that which exceeds my humble powers, but I trust in the compassion and mercy of the All-powerful God.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
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