Quotes from book

Cold Mountain

“[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”

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

“Verbs. All of them tiring.”

“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?”

“I know I don't need him, but I think I want him.”

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

“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 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”

“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.”

“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.”