“Words, when they've been captured and imprisoned on paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything that happens is fluid, changeable. After they've passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time. Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a rattlesnake skin strippd from the meat and stretched and tacked to a barn wall. Every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing. Flat and still and harmless.” WritingThirteen Moons Author:Charles Frazier
“I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy breath. Smothered it. Words, when they’ve been captured and imprisoned on paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything that happens is fluid, changeable. After they’ve passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time. Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a rattlesnake skin stripped from the meat and stretched and tacked to a barn wall. Every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing. Flat and still and harmless. Bear recognized that all writing memorializes a momentary line of thought as if it were final. But I was always word-smitten.” WritingWordsMemory Author:Charles Frazier
“I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.” WritingClassCreativeTakenCreative Writing Author:Charles Frazier
“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.” WritingWellsKindMadeBookHandsMightDecisionNiceNew YorkMysteriousJust OneGossipHarper Author:Charles Frazier
“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.” WritingMemoriesFictionDependsLabelsGenreHistoricOur Memories Author:Charles Frazier
“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.” WorldWritingMindTwoColdMountainCleverVulnerableLandscapeClimbsMapsSouthernGeographyCarolinaNorth CarolinaTwo WorldsAppalachiaFolktalesCold Mountain Author:Charles Frazier
“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.” WayWritingYearsLooksRealEndsEasyNovelEditorsScareScrapDead Ends Author:Charles Frazier
