The Widow Of The South Quotes
"The only grove that concerned her was the one beneath her feet, a grove of boys and men."
"She had seen enough of death and felt entitled to imagine herself as something other than an undertaker."
"Not nothing. Can’t fix everything, she thought."
"I promise you’ll never get your name in this book, if you promise to never come in here again."
"The war had come to her one day, suddenly and with an otherworldly insistence that wasn’t the work of the sovereign God she thought she had known."
"She was not afraid of much, and she especially wasn’t afraid of God. Not anymore, not for a long time."
"Let the gossips have their little parties and caress the folded sleeves of the armless."
"But there was more to seeing than that, she thought."
"Everyone had their own way of getting their mind right."
"He could work with fear. Hell, he had won whole battles with little more than the fear in the eyes of trembling Union commanders."
"He had the stink of death on him, and it was too late to do anything about it."
"He wished it could all end right there and that the rebels could see themselves as I saw them at that moment."
"It was an extraordinary idea, one that made me nervous in my stomach."
"He had seen such haunted faces in Mississippi, western Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, widows and orphans chopping at the soil with broken hoes or running ahead of the invasion in their fancy carriages. Same face."
"I wanted to say, I’m the only son of a widow, too, because it was true and it hadn’t kept me from being shot at yet."
"I wished it could all end right there and that the rebels could see themselves as I saw them at that moment."
"I was proud that such an army, a vibrating mass of butternut gray and sharp metal, screeching that strange wail of theirs, was arrayed against me and my men."
"If my life was insignificant and my death meaningless, then I was free of this world and I became the sole sovereign of my own world, a world in which one act of courage before death would be mine to keep forever."
"When had he become so sentimental and stupid?"
"The presence of Yankees on his property posed a threat."
"I will cut your tongue out if you talk back to me again."
"It was as if a wave had crashed over him and he’d been pulled out to sea."
"The dead are objects, they are litter to be removed."
"Their very attitude as they lay prone upon the ground, with extended, earth-clutching fingers, and with their faces partially buried in the soil, told the tale of mental agony they had endured before death released them."
"For many years afterward the survivors wrote beautiful letters and memoirs that always, always stumbled when they came to the task of describing the dead."
"You only got two choices in this world—you’re either asleep or awake, and you’re never one or the other for long."
"The jokes was what made me finally understand where I was."
"I heard the woman walking across the floorboards again."
"That’s when the pain came, and I knew all my senses were back."
"I blessed her in my head, even though I didn’t think much of God then."
"I tried to remember what had happened to me."
"She was about the cleanest thing I’d seen in months. Years. Maybe ever."
"Then it’s a prison, ain’t it? Whatever they want to call it."
"I got a letter for my mother. She don’t know where I am, dammit."
"I had no power to do anything; I was pinned to the floor by nervousness and pain."
"I watched her and felt grateful and heated and afraid, all together."
"I felt the world receding from me every moment she stood in that room."
"I saw her and felt grateful and heated and afraid, all together."
"I hated that she made me think these things, and at first I thought this meant I ought to hate her, rather than the man who had aimed his rifle at my leg."
"I don’t think you-all should be moving around."
"You supposed to be around people who love you when you go, not all these farting and cussing sons of bitches."
"I love one person, and she could keep me alive, I know she could."
"I’ve been trying to pray, but I don’t know much prayers—she was the one who always did the praying."
"Please tell her I tried. I didn’t mean to lose it."
"Maybe you can write her and just tell her that I was here and where she can find me when I go."
"I don’t got it anymore. It was stole from me, and I couldn’t get it back."
"The dead men were stiff, but they still flexed a little."
"Living did not seem like a gift. It was a heavy weight, but it was all I had anymore."
"The whole world was cheap and mean, and I was going to be cheap and mean along with it just so long as it meant staying alive."
"We played for scrip, which had never been worth much and I reckoned would be worthless soon enough."
"I don’t have any answers to any of that, ma’am."
"You will explain the things to me that I have not been able to understand."
"The sun was setting just then, and that low orange light seemed to light up every individual piece of dust on the windowsill."
"I knew what she was asking, and the truth was that I had never thought much about what it felt like to kill other men."
"I didn’t know how to live, exactly, but I knew I had to figure that out now."
"I suppose I’ll have to ask you the questions."
"Just tell me what you want from me, and I’ll give it to you. I got to settle accounts here shortly anyway."
"My husband is off on his own errands these days. He has no interest in you."
"I thought I could order the world to my liking, in the way I imagined it should be."
"I could not imagine this college, those antiquities. He came from a place I would never see, where he spent his time doing things I couldn’t see the use of doing."
"I’ve come for help. For your help and for help from these men."
"No one could see them, these treasures, these antiquities."
"It just seemed funny that they had to dig into the graves to save them and that the dead would end up scattered around the country, anywhere but where they’d started."
"I knew what I had to do now. He would not allow a man to speak to Miss Carrie that way. Not any man, and especially not that man."
"I am alone on this earth, and that’s also your doing."
"The bitterness will kill you quicker than that bullet, Mr. Baylor."
"We all die, we all have it in common. It was an awesome and fearsome thing."
"I was meant to be there and that if I fainted, then I was intended to faint."
"Their movement from abandonment to discovery to final rest was an unremarkable journey."
"Such things were the wages of war and it was only our own weakness as sinners."
"It was good that he could be there to do penance for that."
"He watched us every day, as if he were standing vigil over something."
"Every day a few more of these men showed up, until John had ten carts on the road to Carnton constantly."
"The violence would not end, but I still had my role to play."
"To refuse them would mean to lose faith. Not just faith in God so much as faith in man."
"I had resolved to be the designated mourner, to be the woman who would remember so others could forget."
"The violence and lawlessness marked those years following the war, and still Carrie stayed put."
"Her genius was that she had known all along that this would happen to her, that this was her purpose."
"She had brought the war home, and she grieved every day of her life for the row upon row of men she had never known."
"She was a Southerner who had become an American by her persistent sacrifice."