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Finally He Said That If Men Drink The Blood Of God Yet They Do Not Understand The Seriousness Of What They Do. He Said That Men Wish To Be Serious But They Do Not Understand How To Be So. Between Their Acts And Their Ceremonies Lies The World And In This World The Storms Blow And The Trees Twist In The Wind And All The Animals That God Has Made Go To And Fro Yet This World Men Do Not See. They See The Acts Of Their Own Hands Or They See That Which They Name And Call Out To One Another But The World Between Is Invisible To Them

-Cormac McCarthy

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Finally He Said That

Cormac McCarthy

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Finally He Said That If Men Drink The Blood Of God Yet They Do Not Understand The Seriousness Of What They Do. He Said That Men Wish To Be Serious But They Do Not Understand How To Be So. Between Their Acts And Their Ceremonies Lies The World And In This World The Storms Blow And The Trees Twist In The Wind And All The Animals That God Has Made Go To And Fro Yet This World Men Do Not See. They See The Acts Of Their Own Hands Or They See That Which They Name And Call Out To One Another But The World Between Is Invisible To Them

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For Even If You Should Have Stood Your Ground, He Said, Yet What Ground Was It?

My Daddy Used To Tell Me Not To Chew On Somethin That Was Eatin You.

All The Pretty Horses

And Perhaps Beyond Those Shrouded Swells Another Man Did Walk With Another Child On The Dead Gray Sands. Slept But A Sea Apart On Another Beach Among The Bitter Ashes Of The World Or Stood In Their Rags Lost To The Same Indifferent Sun.

A Dream Inside A Dream Might Not Be A Dream.

He Could Not Construct For The Child's Pleasure The World He'd Lost Without Constructing The Loss As Well And He Thought Perhaps The Child Had Known This Better Than He.

She Was Gone And The Coldness Of It Was Her Final Gift.

If People Knew The Story Of Their Lives How Many Would Then Elect To Live Them? People Speak About What Is In Store. But There Is Nothing In Store. The Day Is Made Of What Has Come Before. The World Itself Must Be Surprised At The Shape Of That Which Appears. Perhaps Even God.

See The Child. He Is Pale And Thin, He Wears A Thin And Ragged Linen Shirt. He Stokes The Scullery Fire.

The World Shrinking Down About A Raw Core Of Parsible Entities. The Names Of Things Slowly Following Those Things Into Oblivion. Colors. The Names Of Birds. Things To Eat. Finally The Name Of Things One Believed To Be True. More Fragile Than He Would Have Thought. How Much Was Gone Already? The Sacred Idiom Shorn Of Its Referents And So Of Its Reality. Drawing Down Like Something Trying To Preserve Heat. In Time To Wink Out Forever.

See The Hand That Nursed The Serpent. The Fine Hasped Pipes Of Her Fingerbones. The Skin Bewenned And Speckled. The Veins Are Milkblue And Bulby. A Thin Gold Ring Set With Diamonds. That Raised The Once Child's Heart Of Her To Agonies Of Passion Before I Was. Here Is The Anguish Of Mortality. Hopes Wrecked, Love Sundered. See The Mother Sorrowing. How Everything That I Was Warned Of's Come To Pass.

Not All Dying Words Are True And This Blessing Is No Less Real For Being Shorn Of Its Ground.

The Jagged Mountains Were Pure Blue In The Dawn And Everywhere Birds Twittered And The Sun When It Rose Caught The Moon In The West So That They Lay Opposed To Each Other Across The Earth, The Sun Whitehot And The Moon A Pale Replica, As If They Were The Ends Of A Common Bore Beyond Whose Terminals Burned Worlds Past All Reckoning.

I Think That When The Lies Are All Told And Forgot The Truth Will Be There Yet. It Dont Move About From Place To Place And It Dont Change From Time To Time. You Cant Corrupt It Any More Than You Can Salt Salt.

There Was A Sharp Crack From Somewhere On The Mountain. Then Another. It's Just A Tree Falling, He Said. It's Okay. The Boy Was Looking At The Dead Roadside Trees. It's Okay, The Man Said. All The Trees In The World Are Going To Fall Sooner Or Later. But Not On Us.

This Country Will Kill You In A Heartbeat And Still People Love It.

I Yearn For The Darkness. I Pray For Death. Real Death. If I Thought That In Death I Would Meet The People I've Known In Life I Don't Know What I'd Do. That Would Be The Ultimate Horror. The Ultimate Despair. If I Had To Meet My Mother Again And Start All Of That All Over, Only This Time Without The Prospect Of Death To Look Forward To? Well. That Would Be The Final Nightmare. Kafka On Wheels.

You Always Pay Too Much. Particularly For Promises. There Aint No Such Thing As A Bargain Promise.

The Things I Believed In Dont Exist Any More. It's Foolish To Pretend That They Do. Western Civilization Finally Went Up In Smoke In The Chimneys At Dachau But I Was Too Infatuated To See It. I See It Now.

I Ain't Got An Original Thought In My Head. If It Ain't Got The Scent Of Divinity To It, I Ain't Interested In It

Original Thought

Your God Must Once Have Stood At A Dawn Of Infinite Possibilities, And This Is What He's Made Of It. You Tell Me That I Want God's Love? I Don't. Perhaps I Want Forgiveness, But There's No-one To Ask It Of. And There's No Going Back, There's No Setting Things Right, There's Only The Hope Of Nothingness.

In The End We All Come To Be Cured Of Our Sentiments.

All The Pretty Horses

The Man Watched Him. Real Life Is Pretty Bad? What Do You Think? Well, I Think We're Still Here. A Lot Of Bad Things Have Happened But We're Still Here. Yeah. You Don't Think That's So Great. It's Okay.

Just Take Me With You. Please. I Cant. Please, Papa. I Cant. I Cant Hold My Son Dead In My Arms. I Thought I Could But I Cant.

Long Before Morning I Knew That What I Was Seeking To Discover Was A Thing I'd Always Known. That All Courage Was A Form Of Constancy. That It Is Always Himself That The Coward Abandoned First. After This All Other Betrayals Come Easily.

My Daddy Always Told Me To Just Do The Best You Knew How And Tell The Truth. He Said There Was Nothin To Set A Man’s Mind At Ease Like Wakin Up In The Morning And Not Havin To Decide Who You Were. And If You Done Somethin Wrong Just Stand Up And Say You Done It And Say You’re Sorry And Get On With It. Don’t Haul Stuff Around With You.

She Said That These Were Things All Women Knew Yet Seldom Spoke Of. Lastly She Said That If Women Were Drawn To Rash Men It Was Only That In Their Secret Hearts They Knew That A Man Who Would Not Kill For Them Was Of No Use At All.

Easy To See That Naught Save Sorrow Could Bring A Man To Such A View Of Things. And Yet A Sorrow For Which There Can Be No Help Is No Sorrow. It Is Some Dark Sister Traveling In Sorrow's Clothing. Men Do Not Turn From God So Easily You See. Not So Easily. Deep In Each Man Is The Knowledge That Something Knows Of His Existence. Something Knows, And Cannot Be Fled Nor Hid From. To Imagine Otherwise Is To Imagine The Unspeakable. It Was Never That This Man Ceased To Believe In God. No. It Was Rather That He Came To Believe Terrible Things Of Him.

A Man Seeks His Own Destiny And No Other, Said The Judge. Wil Or Nill. Any Man Who Could Discover His Own Fate And Elect Therefore Some Opposite Course Could Only Come At Last To That Selfsame Reckoning At The Same Appointed Time, For Each Man's Destiny Is As Large As The World He Inhabits And Contains Within It All Opposites As Well. The Desert Upon Which So Many Have Been Broken Is Vast And Calls For Largeness Of Heart But It Is Also Ultimately Empty. It Is Hard, It Is Barren. Its Very Nature Is Stone.

I Have No Enemies. I Dont Permit Such A Thing.

My Perfect Day Is Sitting In A Room With Some Blank Paper. That's Heaven. That's Gold, And Anything Else Is Just A Waste Of Time.

In The Spaniards Heart Is A Great Yearning For Freedom, But Only His Own. A Great Love For Truth And Honor In All Its Forms, But Not In Its Substance. And A Deep Conviction That Nothing Can Be Proven Except That It Be Made To Bleed. Virgins, Bulls, Men. Ultimately God Himself.

To Have A Child When You're Older, It Wrenches You Up Out Of Your Nap And Makes You Look At Things, You Know, Afresh. It Forces The World On You. And I Think It's A Good Thing.

I Don't Think Goodness Is Something That You Learn. If You're Left Adrift In The World To Learn Goodness From It, You Would Be In Trouble.

They Were Watching, Out There Past Men's Knowing, Where Stars Are Drowning And Whales Ferry Their Vast Souls Through The Black And Seamless Sea.

The Night Sky Lies So Sprent With Stars That There Is Scarcely Space Of Black At All And They Fall All Night In Bitter Arcs And It Is So That Their Numbers Are No Less.

The Small Wad Of Burning Paper Drew Down To A Wisp Of Flame And Then Died Out Leaving A Faint Pattern For Just A Moment In The Incandescence Like The Shape Of A Flower, A Molten Rose. Then All Was Dark Again.

There Is For A Man Two Things In Life That Are Very Important, Head And Shoulders Above Everything Else. Find Work You Like, And Find Someone To Live With You Like. Very Few People Get Both.

At One Time In The World There Were Woods That No One Owned

Years Later He'd Stood In The Charred Ruins Of A Library Where Blackened Books Lay In Pools Of Water. Shelves Tipped Over. Some Rage At The Lies Arranged In Their Thousands Row On Row. He Picked Up One Of The Books And Thumbed Through The Heavy Bloated Pages. He'd Not Have Thought The Value Of The Smallest Thing Predicated On A World To Come. It Surprised Him. That The Space Which These Things Occupied Was Itself An Expectation.

The Wrath Of God Lies Sleeping. It Was Hid A Million Years Before Men Were And Only Men Have The Power To Wake It.

It Is Not My Experience That Life’s Difficulties Make People More Charitable.

Do You Have Any Notion Of How Goddamned Crazy You Are?

How Does A Man Decide In What Order To Abandon His Life?

If There's One Thing On This Planet You Don't Look Like It's A Bunch Of Good Luck Walkin Around.

He Walked Out In The Gray Light And Stood And He Saw For A Brief Moment The Absolute Truth Of The World. The Cold Relentless Circling Of The Intestate Earth. Darkness Implacable. The Blind Dogs Of The Sun In Their Running. The Crushing Black Vacuum Of The Universe. And Somewhere Two Hunted Animals Trembling Like Ground-foxes In Their Cover. Borrowed Time And Borrowed World And Borrowed Eyes With Which To Sorrow It.

I Don't Know What Sort Of World She Will Live In And I Have No Fixed Opinions Concerning How She Should Live In It. I Only Know That If She Does Not Come To Value What Is True Above What Is Useful, It Will Make Little Difference Whether She Lives At All.

He Said That Men Believe The Blood Of The Slain To Be Of No Consequence But That The Wolf Knows Better. He Said That The Wolf Is A Being Of Great Order And That It Knows What Men Do Not: That There Is No Order In This World Save That Which Death Has Put There.

He Sat A Long Time And He Thought About His Life And How Little Of It He Could Ever Have Foreseen And He Wondered For All His Will And All His Intent How Much Of It Was His Doing.

Rage Is Really Only For The Good Days. The Truth Is There's Little Of That Left. The Truth Is That The Forms I See Have Been Slowly Emptied Out. They No Longer Have Any Content. They Are Shapes Only. A Train, A Wall, A World. Or A Man. A Thing Dangling In Senseless Articulation In A Howling Void. No Meaning To Its Life. Its Words. Why Would I Seek The Company Of Such A Thing? Why?

I Like What I Do. Some Writers Have Said In Print That They Hated Writing And It Was Just A Chore And A Burden. I Certainly Don't Feel That Way About It. Sometimes It's Difficult. You Know, You Always Have This Image Of The Perfect Thing Which You Can Never Achieve, But Which You Never Stop Trying To Achieve. But I Think ... That's Your Signpost And Your Guide. You'll Never Get There, But Without It You Won't Get Anywhere.

Every Man's Death Is Standing In For Every Other. And Since Death Comes To All There Is No Way To Abate The Fear Of It Except To Love The Man Who Stands For Us.

It Just Bothered Me That You Might Think I'm Somethin Special. I Aint.

It Is Community And Respect, Of Course, But The Dead Have More Claims On You Than What You Might Want To Admit Or Even What You Might Know About And Them Claims Can Be Very Strong Indeed. Very Strong Indeed.

We Think We Are The Victims Of Time. In Reality, The Way Of The World Isn't Fixed Anywhere. How Could That Be Possible? We Are Our Own Journey. And Therefore We Are Time As Well. We Are The Same. Fugitive. Inscrutable. Ruthless.

The Man Who Believes That The Secrets Of The World Are Forever Hidden Lives In Mystery And Fear. Superstition Will Drag Him Down." -the Judge

He Thought Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins. As In A Party Game. Say The Words And Pass It On. So Be Sparing. What You Alter In The Remembering Has Yet A Reality, Known Or Not.

Every Day Is A Lie. But You Are Dying. That Is Not A Lie.

They Spoke Less And Less Between Them Until At Last They Were Silent Altogether As Is Often The Way With Travelers Approaching The End Of A Journey.

What Would You Do If I Died? If You Died I Would Want To Die Too. So You Could Be With Me? Yes. So I Could Be With You. Okay.

If You Dont Respect Me What Must You Think Of Yourself?

The Trouble With A Liar Is He Can't Remember What He Said.

People Think They Know What They Want But They Generally Don't. Sometimes If They're Lucky They'll Get It Anyways.

If A Man's At Odds To Know His Own Mind It's Because He Hasn't Got Aught But His Mind To Know It With.

He Stood At The Window Of The Empty Cafe And Watched The Activites In The Square And He Said That It Was Good That God Kept The Truths Of Life From The Young As They Were Starting Out Or Else They'd Have No Heart To Start At All.

Life Is A Memory, And Then It Is Nothing.

Only Now Is The Child Finally Divested Of All That He Has Been. His Origins Are Become Remote As Is His Destiny And Not Again In All The World's Turning Will There Be Terrains So Wild And Barbarous To Try Whether The Stuff Of Creation May Be Shaped To Man's Will Or Whether His Own Heart Is Not Another Kind Of Clay.

What He Could Bear In The Waking World He Could Not By Night And He Sat Awake For Fear The Dream Would Return.

When The Lambs Is Lost In The Mountain, He Said. They Is Cry. Sometime Come The Mother. Sometime The Wolf.

Each The Others World Entire.

He Said That Those Who Have Endured Some Misfortune Will Always Be Set Apart But That It Is Just That Misfortune Which Is Their Gift And Which Is Their Strength.

All The Pretty Horses

Men's Memories Are Uncertain And The Past That Was Differs Little From The Past That Was Not.

Finally He Said That Among Men There Was No Such Communion As Among Horses And The Notion That Men Can Be Understood At All Was Probably An Illusion.

All The Time You Spend Tryin To Get Back What's Been Took From You There's More Goin Out The Door. After A While You Just Try And Get A Tourniquet On It.

He Didn't Say A Lot So I Tend To Remember What He Did Say. And I Don't Remember That He Had A Lot Of Patience With Havin To Say Things Twice So I Learned To Listen The First Time.

They Heard Somewhere In That Tenantless Night A Bell That Tolled And Ceased Where No Bell Was And They Rode Out On The Round Dais Of The Earth Which Alone Was Dark And No Light To It And Which Carried Their Figures And Bore Them Up Into The Swarming Stars So That They Rode Not Under But Among Them And They Rode At Once Jaunty And Circumspect, Like Thieves Newly Loosed In That Dark Electric, Like Young Thieves In A Glowing Orchard, Loosely Jacketed Against The Cold And Ten Thousand Worlds For The Choosing.

Last Words Are Only Words.

Goodness Will Find The Little Boy. It Always Has. It Will Again.

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave.

In The Nights Sometimes Now He'd Wake In The Back And Freezing Waste Out Of Softly Colored Worlds Of Human Love, The Songs Of Birds, The Sun.

Just Remember That The Things You Put Into Your Head Are There Forever, He Said. You Might Want To Think About That. You Forget Some Things, Dont You? Yes. You Forget What You Want To Remember And You Remember What You Want To Forget.

The Truth About The World, He Said, Is That Anything Is Possible. Had You Not Seen It All From Birth And Thereby Bled It Of Its Strangeness It Would Appear To You For What It Is, A Hat Trick In A Medicine Show, A Fevered Dream, A Trance Bepopulate With Chimeras Having Neither Analogue Nor Precedent, An Itinerant Carnival, A Migratory Tentshow Whose Ultimate Destination After Many A Pitch In A Many A Mudded Field Is Unspeakable And Calamitous Beyond Reckoning.

The Flames Sawed In The Wind And The Embers Paled And Deepened And Paled And Deepened Like The Bloodbeat Of Some Living Thing Eviscerate Upon The Ground Before Them And They Watched The Fire Which Does Contain Within It Something Of Men Themselves Inasmuch As They Are Less Without It And Are Divided From Their Origins And Are Exiles. For Each Fire Is All Fires, And The First Fire And The Last Ever To Be.

They Came Upon Themselves In A Mirror And He Almost Raised The Pistol. It's Us, Papa, The Boy Whispered. It's Us.

Where In This Pukehole Can A Man Get A Drink? He Said

I Don't Know Why I Started Writing. I Don't Know Why Anybody Does It. Maybe They're Bored, Or Failures At Something Else.

In The End We All Come To Be Cured Of Our Sentiments. Those Whom Life Does Not Cure Death Will. The World Is Quite Ruthless In Selecting Between The Dream And Reality, Even Where We Will Not. Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting. I've Thought A Great Deal About My Life And My Country. I Think There Is Little That Can Be Truly Known. My Family Has Been Fortunate. Others Were Less So. As They Are Often Quick To Point Out.

War Is The Ultimate Game Because War Is At Last A Forcing Of The Unity Of Existence. War Is God.

It's The Tide. It's The Dismal Tide. It's Not The One Thing.

What Is It? Nothing. I Had A Bad Dream. What Did You Dream About? Nothing. Are You Okay? No. He Put His Arms Around Him And Held Him. It's Okay, He Said. I Was Crying. But You Didnt Wake Up. I'm Sorry. I Was Just So Tired. I Meant In The Dream.

Do You Know What Happens With People Who Cannot Govern Themselves? That's Right. Others Come In To Govern For Them.

They Rode On And The Sun In The East Flushed Pale Streaks Of Light And Then A Deeper Run Of Color Like Blood Seeping Up In Sudden Reaches Flaring Planewise And Where The Earth Drained Up Into The Sky At The Edge Of Creation The Top Of The Sun Rose Out Of Nothing Like The Head Of A Great Red Phallus Until It Cleared The Unseen Rim And Sat Squat And Pulsing And Malevolent Behind Them.

You Fix What You Can Fix And You Let The Rest Go. If There Ain't Nothin To Be Done About It It Aint Even A Problem. It's Just A Aggravation.

How Surely Are The Dead Beyond Death. Death Is What The Living Carry With Them. A State Of Dread, Like Some Uncanny Foretaste Of A Bitter Memory. But The Dead Do Not Remember And Nothingness Is Not A Curse. Far From It.

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

I Will Do What I Promised." He Whispered. "no Matter What. I Will Not Send You Into The Darkness Alone.

I Was Afraid I Was Goin To Die And Then I Was Afraid I Wasnt.

There Was Someone There And They Had Been There. There Was No One There. There Was Someone There And They Had Been There And They Had Not Left But There Was No One There.

The Voice Of The Almighty Speaks Most Profoundly In Such Things As Lives In Silence Themselves.

The World Was New Each Day For God So Made It Daily. Yet It Contained Within It All The Evils As Before, No More, No Less.

The Nights Were Blinding Cold And Casket Black And The Long Reach Of The Morning Had A Terrible Silence To It.

You Keep Runnin That Mouth And I'm Goin To Take You Back There And Screw You.

Once There Were Brook Trout In The Streams In The Mountains. You Could See Them Standing In The Amber Current Where The White Edges Of Their Fins Wimpled Softly In The Flow. They Smelled Of Moss In Your Hand. Polished And Muscular And Torsional. On Their Backs Were Vermiculate Patterns That Were Maps Of The World In Its Becoming. Maps And Mazes. Of A Thing Which Could Not Be Put Back. Not Be Made Right Again. In The Deep Glens Where They Lived All Things Were Older Than Man And They Hummed Of Mystery.

Scared Money Can’t Win And A Worried Man Can’t Love.

... A Man Leaves Much When He Leaves His Own Country.

For The Poor Any Choice Was A Gift With Two Faces.

Things Happen To You They Happen. They Dont Ask First. They Dont Require Your Permission.

The Judge Placed His Hands On The Ground. He Looked At His Inquisitor. This Is My Claim, He Said. And Yet Everywhere Upon It Are Pockets Of Autonomous Life. Autonomous. In Order For It To Be Mine Nothing Must Be Permitted To Occur Upon It Save By My Dispensation.

Anything That Doesn't Take Years Of Your Life And Drive You To Suicide Hardly Seems Worth Doing.

Only That Man Who Has Offered Up Himself Entire To The Blood Of War, Who Has Been To The Floor Of The Pit And Seen The Horror In The Round And Learned At Last That It Speaks To His Inmost Heart, Only That Man Can Dance. - The Judge

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

She Smiled. I Think It's Just The Snow. I Think It Makes People Stop And Think. Bell Nodded. I Hope It Comes A Blizzard Then.

They Rode Like Men Invested With A Purpose Whose Origins Were Antecedent To Them, Like Blood Legatees Of An Order Both Imperative And Remote. For Although Each Man Among Them Was Discrete Unto Himself, Conjoined They Made A Thing That Had Not Been Before And In That Communal Soul Were Wastes Hardly Reckonable More Than Those Whited Regions On Old Maps Where Monsters Do Live And Where There Is Nothing Other Of The Known World Save Conjectural Winds.

Usually, You Don't Know Where A Book Comes From ... It's Just There, Some Kind Of An Itch That You Can't Quite Scratch.

The World Could Only Be Known As It Existed In Men's Hearts. For While It Seemed A Place Which Contained Men It Was In Reality A Place Contained Within Them.

The One Thing I Can Tell You Is That You Wont Survive For Yourself. I Know Because I Would Never Have Come This Far. A Person Who Had No One Would Be Well Advised To Cobble Together Some Passable Ghost. Breathe It Into Being And Coax It Along With Words Of Love. Offer It Each Phantom Crumb And Shield It From Harm With Your Body. As For Me My Only Hope Is For Eternal Nothingness And I Hope It With All My Heart.

What He Loved In Horses Was What He Loved In Men, The Blood And The Heat Of The Blood That Ran Them. All His Reverence And All His Fondness And All The Leanings Of His Life Were For The Ardenhearted And They Would Always Be So And Never Be Otherwise. (all The Pretty Horses)

Men Speak Of Blind Destiny, A Thing Without Scheme Or Purpose. But What Sort Of Destiny Is That? Each Act In This World From Which There Can Be No Turning Back Has Before It Another, And It Another Yet. In A Vast Endless Net. Men Imagine That The Choices Before Them Are Theirs To Make. But We Are Free To Act Only Upon What Is Given. Choice Is Lost In The Maze Of Generations And Each Act In The Maze Is Itself An Enslavement For It Voids Every Alternative And Binds One Ever More Tightly Into The Constraints That Make A Life.

Probably I Dont Believe In A Lot Of Things That I Used To Believe In But That Doesnt Mean I Dont Believe In Anything.

The Rain Falls Upon The Just And Also On The Unjust Fellas But Mostly It Falls Upon The Just Cause The Unjust Have The Just's Umbrellas

One Of The Things You Realize About Gettin Older Is That Not Everybody Is Goin To Get Older With You.

Nor Does God Whisper Through The Trees. His Voice Is Not To Be Mistaken. When Men Hear It They Fall To Their Knees And Their Souls Are Riven And They Cry Out To Him And There Is No Fear But Only Wildness Of Heart That Springs From Such Longing.

He Imagined The Pain Of The World To Be Like Some Formless Parasitic Being Seeking Out The Warmth Of Human Souls Wherein To Incubate And He Thought He Knew What Made One Liable To Its Visitations. What He Had Not Known Was That It Was Mindless And So Had No Way To Know The Limits Of Those Souls And What He Feared Was That There Might Be No Limits.

Words Pale And Lose Their Savor While Pain Is Always New.

I'd Rather To Make A Good Run As A Bad Stand.

Ever Dumb Thing I Ever Done In My Life There Was A Decision I Made Before That Got Me Into It. It Was Never The Dumb Thing. It Was Always Some Choice I'd Made Before It.

Where Men Can't Live Gods Fare No Better.

In The Spring Or Warmer Weather When The Snow Thaws In The Woods The Tracks Of Winter Reappear On Slender Pedestals And The Snow Reveals In Palimpsest Old Buried Wanderings, Struggles, Scenes Of Death. Tales Of Winter Brought To Light Again Like Time Turned Back Upon Itself.

In The Neuter Austerity Of That Terrain All Phenomena Were Bequeathed A Strange Equality And No One Thing Nor Spider Nor Stone Nor Blade Of Grass Could Put Forth Claim To Precedence. The Very Clarity Of These Articles Belied Their Familiarity, For The Eye Predicates The Whole On Some Feature Or Part And Here Was Nothing More Luminous Than Another And Nothing More Enshadowed And In The Optical Democracy Of Such Landscapes All Preference Is Made Whimsical And A Man And A Rock Become Endowed With Unguessed Kinship.

I Didn't Mean I'd Seen Everything, John Grady Said. I Know You Didn't. I Just Meant I'd Seen Some Things I'd As Soon Not Of. I Know It. There's Hard Lessons In This World. What's The Hardest? I Dont Know. Maybe It's Just That When Things Are Gone They're Gone. They Aint Comin Back. Yessir.

It May Be That The Life I Desire For Her No Longer Even Exists, Yet I Know What She Does Not. That There Is Nothing To Lose.

What You Alter In The Remembering Has Yet A Reality, Known Or Not.

There Is A Moon Shaped Rictus In The Streetlamp's Globe Where A Stone Has Gone And From This Aperture There Drifts Down Through The Constant Helix Of Aspiring Insects A Faint And Steady Rain Of The Same Forms Burnt And Lifeless.

And In The Dream I Knew That He Was Goin On Ahead And That He Was Fixin To Make A Fire Somewhere Out There In All That Dark And All That Cold And I Knew That Whenever I Got There He Would Be There. And Then I Woke Up.

This Place Aint The Same. It Never Will Be. Maybe We've All Got A Little Crazy. I Guess If Everbody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice, What Do You Think?

I Always Thought When I Got Older That God Would Sort Of Come Into My Life In Some Way. He Didn't. I Don't Blame Him. If I Was Him I'd Have The Same Opinion About Me That He Does.

For Me The World Has Always Been More Of A Puppet Show. But When One Looks Behind The Curtain And Traces The Strings Upward He Finds They Terminate In The Hands Of Yet Other Puppets, Themselves With Their Own Strings Which Trace Upward In Turn, And So On. In My Own Life I Saw These Strings Whose Origins Were Endless Enact The Deaths Of Great Men In Violence And Madness. Enact The Ruin Of A Nation.

I Think If You Were Satan And You Were Settin Around Tryin To Think Up Somethin That Would Just Bring The Human Race To Its Knees What You Would Probably Come Up With Is Narcotics.

It Was Always Himself That The Coward Abandoned First. After This All Other Betrayals Came Easily.

The Night Is Quiet. Like A Camp Before Battle. The City Beset By A Thing Unknown And Will It Come From Forest Or Sea? The Murengers Have Walled The Pale, The Gates Are Shut, But Lo The Thing's Inside And Can You Guess His Shape? Where He's Kept Or What's The Counter Of His Face? Is He A Weaver, Bloody Shuttle Shot Through A Time Warp, A Carder Of Souls From The World's Nap? Or A Hunter With Hounds Or Do Bone Horses Draw His Dead Cart Through The Streets And Does He Call His Trade To Each? Dear Friend He Is Not To Be Dwelt Upon For It Is By Just Such Wise That He's Invited In

Creedless Shells Of Men Tottering Down The Causeways Like Migrants In A Feverland.

But I Didn't Know What To Say To Him. What Do You Say To A Man That By His Own Admission Has No Soul? Why Would You Say Anything?

All Progressions From A Higher To A Lower Order Are Marked By Ruins And Mystery And A Residue Of Nameless Rage.

Acts Have Their Being In The Witness. Without Him Who Can Speak Of It? In The End One Could Even Say That The Act Is Nothing, The Witness All.

Where Hunters And Woodcutters Once Slept In Their Boots By The Dying Light Of Their Thousand Fires And Went On, Old Teutonic Forebears With Eyes Incandesced By The Visionary Light Of A Massive Rapacity, Wave On Wave Of The Violent And The Insane, Their Brains Stoked With Spoorless Analogues Of All That Was, Lean Aryans With Their Abrogate Semitic Chapbook Reenacting The Dramas And Parable Therein.

Pain For The Old Was No Longer A Surprise.

I've Always Been Interested In The Southwest. There Isn't A Place In The World You Can Go Where They Don't Know About Cowboys And Indians And The Myth Of The West.

The Core Of Literature Is The Idea Of Tragedy... You Don't Really Learn Much From The Good Things That Happen To You.

To See God Everywhere Is To See Him Nowhere.

In His Dream She Was Sick And He Cared For Her. The Dream Bore The Look Of Sacrifice But He Thought Differently. He Did Not Take Care Of Her And She Died Alone Somewhere In The Dark And There Is No Other Dream Nor Other Waking World And There Is No Other Tale To Tell.

Looking Over The Country With Those Sunken Eyes As If The World Out There Had Been Altered Or Made Suspect By What He'd Seen Of It Elsewhere. As If He Might Never See It Right Again. Or Worse Did See It Right At Last. See It As It Had Always Been, Would Forever Be.

The Way Of The World Is To Bloom And To Flower And Die But In The Affairs Of Men There Is No Waning And The Noon Of His Expression Signals The Onset Of Night. His Spirit Is Exhausted At The Peak Of Its Achievement. His Meridian Is At Once His Darkening And The Evening Of His Day.

Then They Set Out Along The Blacktop In The Gunmetal Light, Shuffling Through The Ash, Each The Other's World Entire.

I Can Normally Tell How Intelligent A Man Is By How Stupid He Thinks I Am.

The Passing Of Armies And The Passing Of Sands In The Desert Are One.

I Dont Know What I Ever Done, She Said. I Truly Dont. Chigurh Nodded. Probably You Do, He Said. There's A Reason For Everything. She Shook Her Head. How Many Times I've Said Them Very Words. I Wont Again.

No Lists Of Things To Be Done. The Day Providential To Itself. The Hour. There Is No Later. This Is Later. All Things Of Grace And Beauty Such That One Holds Them To One's Heart Have A Common Provenance In Pain. Their Birth In Grief And Ashes.

Suppose You Were The Last One Left? Suppose You Did That To Yourself?

You Forget What You Want To Remember, And You Remember What You Want To Forget.

You Think When You Wake Up In The Mornin Yesterday Don't Count. But Yesterday Is All That Does Count. What Else Is There? Your Life Is Made Out Of The Days It’s Made Out Of. Nothin Else.

He Never Sleeps, The Judge. He Is Dancing, Dancing. He Says That He Will Never Die.

I Felt Early On I Wasn't Going To Be A Respectable Citizen.

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

Can You Do It? When The Time Comes? When The Time Comes There Will Be No Time. Now Is The Time. Curse God And Die.

The Man Who Believes That The Secrets Of The World Are Forever Hidden Lives In Mystery And Fear. Superstition Will Drag Him Down. The Rain Will Erode The Deeds Of His Life. But That Man Who Sets Himself The Task Of Singling Out The Thread Of Order From The Tapestry Will By The Decision Alone Have Taken Charge Of The World And It Is Only By Such Taking Charge That He Will Effect A Way To Dictate The Terms Of His Own Fate.

By The Time I Was Sixteen I Had Read Many Books And I Had Become A Freethinker.

On This Road There Are No Godspoke Men. They Are Gone And I Am Left And They Have Taken With Them The World.

Keep A Little Fire Burning; However Small, However Hidden.

The Soft Black Talc Blew Through The Streets Like Squid Ink Uncoiling Along A Sea Floor And The Cold Crept Down And The Dark Came Early And The Scavengers Passing Down The Steep Canyons With Their Torches Trod Silky Holes In The Drifted Ash That Closed Behind Them Silently As Eyes.

Hard Weather, Says The Old Man. So Let It Be. Wrap Me In The Weathers Of The Earth, I Will Be Hard And Hard. My Face Will Wash Rain Like The Stones.

It Had Ceased Raining In The Night And He Walked Out On The Road And Called For The Dog. He Called And Called. Standing In That Inexplicable Darkness. Where There Was No Sound Anywhere Save Only The Wind. After A While He Sat In The Road. He Took Off His Hat And Placed It On The Tarmac Before Him And He Bowed His Head And Held His Face In His Hands And Wept. He Sat There For A Long Time And After A While The East Did Gray And After A While The Right And Godmade Sun Did Rise, Once Again, For All And Without Distinction.

For Things At A Common Destination There Is A Common Path. Not Always Easy To See. But There.

You Either Stick Or You Quit. And I Wouldnt Quit You I Dont Care What You Done.

The Notion That The Species Can Be Improved In Some Way, That Everyone Could Live In Harmony, Is A Really Dangerous Idea. Those Who Are Afflicted With This Notion Are The First Ones To Give Up Their Souls, Their Freedom. Your Desire That It Be That Way Will Enslave You And Make Your Life Vacuous.

If You Break Little Promises, You'll Break Big Ones.

In Every Trade Save War Men Of Talent And Vigor Prosper. In War They Die.

When He Went Back To The Fire He Knelt And Smoothed Her Hair As She Slept And He Said If He Were God He Would Have Made The World Just So And No Different.

It Makes No Difference What Men Think Of War, Said The Judge. War Endures. As Well Ask Men What They Think Of Stone. War Was Always Here. Before Man Was, War Waited For Him. The Ultimate Trade Awaiting Its Ultimate Practitioner. That Is The Way It Was And Will Be. That Way And Not Some Other Way.

Well, I Guess In All Honesty I Would Have To Say That I Never Knew Nor Did I Ever Hear Of Anybody That Money Didnt Change.

Remember Her Hair In The Morning Before It Was Pinned, Black, Rampant, Savage With Loveliness. As If She Slept In Perpetual Storm.

Even If What You're Working On Doesn't Go Anywhere, It Will Help You With The Next Thing You're Doing. Make Yourself Available For Something To Happen. Give It A Shot.

The Martyr Who Longs For The Flames Can Be No Right Candidate For Them.

Suttree Stood Among The Screaming Leaves And Called The Lightning Down. It Cracked And Boomed About And He Pointed Out The Darkened Heart Within Him And Cried For Light. If There Be Any Art In The Weathers Of This Earth. Or Char These Bones To Coal. If You Can, If You Can. A Blackened Rag In The Rain.

She Looked Up At Him And Her Face Was Pale And Austere In The Uplight And Her Eyes Lost In Their Darkly Shadowed Hollows Save Only For The Glint Of Them And He Could See Her Throat Move In The Light And He Saw In Her Face And In Her Figure Something He'd Not Seen Before And The Name Of That Thing Was Sorrow.

The Priest Therefore Saw What The Anchorite Could Not. That God Needs No Witness. Neither To Himself Nor Against. The Truth Is Rather That If There Were No God Then There Could Be No Witness For There Could Be No Identity To The World But Only Each Man's Opinion Of It. The Priest Saw That There Is No Man Who Is Elect Because There Is No Man Who Is Not. To God Every Man Is A Heretic.

When God Made Man The Devil Was At His Elbow. A Creature That Can Do Anything. Make A Machine. And A Machine To Make The Machine. And Evil That Can Run Itself A Thousand Years, No Need To Tend It.

You Say You Can't? Then Don't Do It. That's All.

What Man Is Such A Coward He Would Not Rather Fall Once Than Remain Forever Tottering?

The Universe Is No Narrow Thing And The Order Within It Is Not Constrained By Any Latitude In Its Conception To Repeat What Exists In One Part In Any Other Part. Even In This World More Things Exist Without Our Knowledge Than With It And The Order In Creation Which You See Is That Which You Have Put There, Like A String In A Maze, So That You Shall Not Lose Your Way. For Existence Has Its Own Order And That No Man’s Mind Can Compass, That Mind Itself Being But A Fact Among Others.

There Was Nothin To Set A Man's Mind At Ease Like Wakin Up In The Morning And Not Havin To Decide Who You Were.

He Knew Only That His Child Was His Warrant. He Said: If He Is Not The Word Of God God Never Spoke.

Ive Seen The Meanness Of Humans Till I Dont Know Why God Aint Put Out The Sun And Gone Away.

Ever Step You Take Is Forever.

Doomed Enterprises Divide Lives Forever Into The Then And Now

When You Die It's The Same As If Everybody Else Did Too.

We're Carrying The Fire.

The Cooler Days Have Brought A Wistful Mood Upon Him. The Smell Of Coalsmoke In The Air At Night. Old Times, Dead Years. For Him Such Memories Are Bitter Ones.

Life Is Brief And To Have To Spend Every Day Of It Doing What Somebody Else Wants You To Do Is Not The Way To Live It.

Your Heart's Desire Is To Be Told Some Mystery. The Mystery Is That There Is No Mystery.

Hell Ain't Half Full.

By Early Evening All The Sky To The North Had Darkened And The Spare Terrain They Trod Had Turned A Neuter Gray As Far As The Eye Could See. They Grouped In The Road At The Top Of A Rise And Looked Back. The Storm Front Towered Above Them And The Wind Was Cool On Their Sweating Faces. They Slumped Bleary-eyed In Their Saddles And Looked At One Another. Shrouded In The Black Thunderheads The Distant Lightning Glowed Mutely Like Welding Seen Through Foundry Smoke. As If Repairs Were Under Way At Some Flawed Place N The Iron Dark Of The World.

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