Ada: I brought you this book... and this photo. I'm not smiling in it. I don't know how to do that... hold a smile.
Ruby: This world won't stand long. God won't let it stand this way long.
Ada: When this war is over, there will be a reckoning.
Ruby: If I cry one tear for my daddy I stole it off a crocodile.
Ruby: Let's put him in a pot.
Ruby: I despise a floggin' rooster.
Maddy: See, I think there's a plan. There's a design for each and every one of us. You look at nature. Bird flies somewhere, picks up a seed, shits the seed out, plant grows. Bird's got a job, shit's got a job, seed's got a job. And you've got a job.
Rev. Monroe: I lost your mother after twenty-two months of marriage. It was enough for a lifetime.
Ada: My love where are you? With no hope of reaching you I write to you... as I have always done.
Inman: I imagine God is weary of being called down on both sides of an argument.
Ada: All this while I've been packing ice around my heart. How do I make it melt?
Ruby: My daddy - he'd walk forty miles for liquor but not forty inches for kindness.
Ada: What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.
Ada: If you are fighting, stop fighting. If you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me. Come back to me is my request.
Answer: SPOILER: The director is building up to the peak of pathos of Inman being killed. While it is good to have many other sad scenes prior to this to foreshadow it, he probably felt that a dead baby and its mother's suicide might actually trump the hero's death in the sadness stakes which would make the real ending an anti-climax.
Oscar Bravo