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He Lay Listening To The Water Drip In The Woods. Bedrock, This. The Cold And The Silence. The Ashes Of The Late World Carried On The Bleak And Temporal Winds To And Fro In The Void. Carried Forth And Scattered And Carried Forth Again. Everything Uncoupled From Its Shoring. Unsupported In The Ashen Air. Sustained By A Breath, Trembling And Brief. If Only My Heart Were Stone.

-Cormac McCarthy

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He Lay Listening To

Cormac McCarthy

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He Lay Listening To The Water Drip In The Woods. Bedrock, This. The Cold And The Silence. The Ashes Of The Late World Carried On The Bleak And Temporal Winds To And Fro In The Void. Carried Forth And Scattered And Carried Forth Again. Everything Uncoupled From Its Shoring. Unsupported In The Ashen Air. Sustained By A Breath, Trembling And Brief. If Only My Heart Were Stone.

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If You Think About Some Of The Things That Are Being Talked About By Thoughtful, Intelligent Scientists, You Realize That In 100 Years The Human Race Won't Even Be Recognizable.

From Daydreams On The Road There Was No Waking. He Plodded On. He Could Remember Everything Of Her Save Her Scent. Seated In A Theatre With Her Beside Him Leaning Forward Listening To The Music. Gold Scrollwork And Sconces And The Tall Columnar Folds Of The Drapes At Either Side Of The Stage. She Held His Hand In Her Lap And He Could Feel The Tops Of Her Stockings Through The Thin Stuff Of Her Summer Dress. Freeze This Frame. Now Call Down Your Dark And Your Cold And Be Damned.

Remembers Everything

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

No One Can Tell You What Your Life Is Goin To Be, Can They? No. It's Never Like What You Expected. Quijada Nodded. If People Knew The Story Of Their Lives How Many Would Then Elect To Live Them?

Query: How Does The Never To Be Differ From What Never Was?

The Societies To Which I Have Been Exposed Seemed To Me Largely Machines For The Suppression Of Women.

There Is No Forgiveness. For Women. A Man May Lose His Honor And Regain It Again. But A Woman Cannot. She Cannot.

In Dreams It Is Often The Case That The Greatest Extravagances Seem Bereft Of Their Power To Astonish And The Most Improbable Chimeras Seem Commonplace.

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

Do You Think That Your Fathers Are Watching? That They Weigh You In Their Ledgerbook? Against What? There Is No Book And Your Fathers Are Dead In The Ground.

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

Perhaps In The World's Destruction It Would Be Possible At Last To See How It Was Made. Oceans, Mountains. The Ponderous Counterspectacle Of Things Ceasing To Be. The Sweeping Waste, Hydroptic And Coldly Secular. The Silence.

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

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.

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

He Was Just Hungry, Papa. He's Going To Die. He's Going To Die Anyway. He's So Scared, Papa. The Man Squatted And Looked At Him. I'm Scared, He Said. Do You Understand? I'm Scared. The Boy Didn't Answer. He Just Sat There With His Head Down, Sobbing. You're Not The One Who Has To Worry About Everything. The Boy Said Something But He Couldn't Understand Him. What? He Said. He Looked Up, His Wet And Grimy Face. Yes I Am, He Said. I Am The One.

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.

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.

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.

Ever Step You Take Is Forever. You Cant Make It Go Away. None Of It. You Understand What I'm Sayin?

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.

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.

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

This Is The Nature Of War, Whose Stake Is At Once The Game And The Authority And The Justification. Seen So, War Is The Truest Form Of Divination. It Is The Testing Of One's Will And The Will Of Another Within That Larger Will Which Because It Binds Them Is Therefore Forced To Select. War Is The Ultimate Game Because War Is At Last A Forcing Of The Unity Of Existence.war Is God.

The Things That I Loved Were Very Frail. Very Fragile. I Didn't Know That. I Thought They Were Indestructible. They Weren't.

When I Came Into Your Life Your Life Was Over. It Had A Beginning, A Middle, And An End. This Is The End. You Can Say That Things Could Have Turned Out Differently. That They Could Have Been Some Other Way. But What Does That Mean? They Are Not Some Other Way. They Are This Way.

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

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.

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.

Deep In Each Man Is The Knowledge That Something Knows Of His Existence. Something Knows, And Cannot Be Fled Nor Hid From.

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

Ah Me, Thou Destiny, Giver Of Evil Gifts.

Here Beyond Men's Judgments All Covenants Were Brittle.

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

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.

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

Suttree Surfaced From These Fevered Deeps To Hear A Maudlin Voice Chant Latin By His Bedside, What Medieval Ghost Come To Usurp His Fallen Corporeality. An Oiled Thumball Redolent Of Lime And Sage Pondered His Shuttered Lids.miserere Mei, Deus ...his Ears Anointed, His Lips ... Omnis Maligna Discordia ... Bechrismed With Scented Oils He Lay Boneless In A Cold Euphoria. Japheth When You Left Your Father's House The Birds Had Flown. You Were Not Prepared For Such Weathers. You'd Spoke Too Lightly Of The Winter In Your Father's Heart. We Saw You In The Streets. Sad.

Books Lie, He Said. God Dont Lie. No, Said The Judge. He Does Not. And These Are His Words. He Held Up A Chunk Of Rock. He Speaks In Stones And Trees, The Bones Of Things. The Squatters In Their Rags Nodded Among Themselves And Were Soon Reckoning Him Correct, This Man Of Learning, In All His Speculations, And This The Judge Encouraged Until They Were Right Proselytes Of The New Order Whereupon He Laughed At Them For Fools.

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

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

The World Is Quite Ruthless In Selecting Between The Dream And The Reality, Even Where We Will Not.

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.

If People Knew The Story Of Their Lives, How Many Would Then Elect To Live Them?

Borrowed Time And Borrowed World And Borrowed Eyes With Which To Sorrow It.

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.

In Dreams We Stand In This Great Democracy Of The Possible And There We Are Right Pilgrims Indeed. There We Go Forth To Meet What We Shall Meet.

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

Whatever In Creation Exists Without My Knowledge Exists Without My Consent.

So Everything Is Necessary. Every Least Thing. This Is The Hard Lesson. Nothing Can Be Dispensed With. Nothing Despised. Because The Seams Are Hid From Us, You See. The Joinery. The Way In Which The World Is Made. We Have No Way To Know What Could Be Taken Away. What Omitted. We Have No Way To Tell What Might Stand And What Might Fall.

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

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.

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

Best Way To Live In California Is To Be From Somewheres Else.

When The Lies Are All Told And Forgot The Truth Will Be Their Yet.

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

Where Men Can't Live Gods Fare No Better.

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.

Dying Ain't In People's Plans, Is It?

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

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

Listen To Me, He Said, When Your Dreams Are Of Some World That Never Was Or Some World That Never Will Be, And You're Happy Again, Then You'll Have Given Up. Do You Understand? And You Can't Give Up, I Won't Let You.

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.

Life Is A Memory, And Then It Is Nothing.

They Sat On A Bench And Sproule Held His Wounded Arm To His Chest And Rocked Back And Forth And Blinked In The Sun. What Do You Want To Do? Said The Kid. Get A Drink Of Water. Other Than That. I Dont Know. You Want To Try And Head Back? To Texas? I Don't Know Where Else. We'd Never Make It. Well You Say. I Aint Got No Say. He Was Coughing Again. He Held His Chest With His Good Hand And Sat As If He'd Get His Breath. What Have You Got, A Cold? I Got Consumption. Consumption? He Nodded. I Come Out Here For My Health.

You Give Up The World Line By Line. Stoically. And Then One Day You Realize That Your Courage Is Farcical. It Doesn't Mean Anything. You've Become An Accomplice In Your Own Annihilation And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It. Everything You Do Closes A Door Somewhere Ahead Of You. And Finally There Is Only One Door Left.

Notions Of Chance And Fate Are The Preoccupations Of Men Engaged In Rash Undertakings.

People Complain About The Bad Things That Happen To Em That They Don't Deserve But They Seldom Mention The Good. About What They Done To Deserve Them Things.

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.

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.

Men Have In Their Minds A Picture Of How The World Will Be. How They Will Be In That World. The World May Be Many Different Ways For Them But There Is One World That Will Never Be And That Is The World They Dream Of.

I Look For The Words, Professor. I Look For The Words Because I Believe That The Words Is The Way To Your Heart.

He Thought That In The Beauty Of The World Were Hid A Secret. He Thought That The World’s Heart Beat At Some Terrible Cost And That The World’s Pain And Its Beauty Moved In A Relationship Of Diverging Equity And That In This Headlong Deficit The Blood Of Multitudes Might Ultimately Be Exacted For The Vision Of A Single Flower.

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

Last Words Are Only Words.

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.

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

There Is No God And We Are His Prophets.

There Is No God

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

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.

If God Meant To Interfere In The Degeneracy Of Mankind Would He Not Have Done So By Now? Wolves Cull Themselves, Man. What Other Creatures Could? And Is The Race Of Man Not More Predacious Yet?

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

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.

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.

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.

What Deity In The Realms Of Dementia, What Rabid God Decocted Out Of The Smoking Lobes Of Hydrophobia Could Have Devised A Keeping Place For Souls So Poor As Is This Flesh. This Mawky Worm-bent Tabernacle.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

I Don't Know What Of Our Culture Is Going To Survive, Or If We Survive. If You Look At The Greek Plays, They're Really Good. And There's Just A Handful Of Them. Well, How Good Would They Be If There Were 2,500 Of Them? But That's The Future Looking Back At Us. Anything You Can Think Of, There's Going To Be Millions Of Them. Just The Sheer Number Of Things Will Devalue Them. I Don't Care Whether It's Art, Literature, Poetry Or Drama, Whatever. The Sheer Volume Of It Will Wash It Out. I Mean, If You Had Thousands Of Greek Plays To Read, Would They Be That Good? I Don't Think So.

But There Are No Absolutes In Human Misery And Things Can Always Get Worse

Creative Work Is Often Driven By Pain. It May Be That If You Don't Have Something In The Back Of Your Head Driving You Nuts, You May Not Do Anything. It's Not A Good Arrangement. If I Were God, I Wouldn't Have Done It That Way.

Even The Damned In Hell Have The Community Of Their Suffering.

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

And For A Moment He Held Out His Hands As If To Steady Himself Or As If To Bless The Ground There Or Perhaps As If To Slow The World That Was Rushing Away And Seemed To Care Nothing For The Old Or The Young Or Rich Or Poor Or Dark Or Pale Or He Or She. Nothing For Their Struggles, Nothing For Their Names. Nothing For The Living Or The Dead.

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.

And The Dreams So Rich In Color. How Else Would Death Call You? Waking In The Cold Dawn It All Turned To Ash Instantly. Like Certain Ancient Frescoes Entombed For Centuries Suddenly Exposed To The Day.

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.

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

The Freedom Of Birds Is An Insult To Me.

Maybe. Anyway, Some Men Get What They Want. No Man. Or Perhaps Only Briefly So As To Lose It. Or Perhaps Only To Prove To The Dreamer That The World Of His Longing Made Real Is No Longer That World At All.

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.

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.

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

Maybe It's Like Mac Says. Ever Man Winds Up With The Horse That Suits Him.

How Would You Know If You Were The Last Man On Earth? He Said. I Don't Guess You Would Know It. You'd Just Be It. Nobody Would Know It. It Wouldn't Make Any Difference. When You Die It's The Same As If Everybody Else Died Too.

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.

There Is No Later. This Is Later.

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

It Looks A Lot Better From Up Here Than It Does Down There, Dont It? Yes. It Does. There's A Lot Of Things Look Better At A Distance. Yeah? I Think So. I Guess There Are. The Life You've Lived, For One. Yeah. Maybe What Of It You Aint Lived Yet, Too.

He Poured The Tumbler Full. Drink Up, He Said. The World Goes On. We Have Dancing Nightly And This Night Is No Exception. The Straight And The Winding Way Are One And Now That You Are Here What Do The Years Count Since Last We Two Met Together? Men's Memories Are Uncertain And The Past That Was Differs Little From The Past That Was Not.

They Trekked Out Along The Crescent Sweep Of Beach, Keeping To The Firmer Sand Below The Tidewrack. They Stood, Their Clothes Flapping Softly. Glass Floats Covered With A Gray Crust. The Bones Of Seabirds. At The Tideline A Woven Mat Of Weeds And The Ribs Of Fishes In Their Millions Stretching Along The Shore As Far As The Eye Could See Like An Isocline Of Death. One Vast Salt Sepulchre. Senseless. Senseless.

The Truth May Often Be Carried About By Those Who Themselves Remain All Unaware Of It. They Bear That Which Has Weight And Substance And Yet For Them Has No Name Whereby It May Be Evoked Or Called Forth. They Go About Ignorant Of The True Nature Of Their Condition, Such Are The Wiles Of Truth And Such Its Stratagems.

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.

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

He Spoke Of His Campaigns In The Deserts Of Mexico And He Told Them Of Horses Killed Under Him And He Said That The Souls Of Horses Mirror The Souls Of Men More Closely Than Men Suppose And That Horses Also Love War. Men Say They Only Learn This But He Said That No Creature Can Learn That Which His Heart Has No Shape To Holo

I Remember In Grammar School The Teacher Asked If Anyone Had Any Hobbies. I Was The Only One With Any Hobbies And I Had Every Hobby There Was... Name Anything, No Matter How Esoteric. I Could Have Given Everyone A Hobby And Still Had 40 Or 50 To Take Home.

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.

A Dream Inside A Dream Might Not Be A Dream.

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

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.

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

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.

The Point Is There Ain't No Point.

We're Carrying The Fire.

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

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

The Closest Bonds We Will Ever Know Are Bonds Of Grief. The Deepest Community One Of Sorrow.

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.

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

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.

He Thought That In The History Of The World It Might Even Be That There Was More Punishment Than Crime But He Took Small Comfort From It.

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.

I Got Here The Same Way The Coin Did.

Word Gets Around When The Circus Comes To Town, Don't It?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

It Starts When You Begin To Overlook Good Manners. Any Time You Quit Hearing Sir And Mam The End Is Pretty Much In Sight.

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.

They Say Death Comes Like A Thief In The Night, Where Is He? I'll Hug His Neck.

There Is No Greater Monster Than Reason.

All The Pretty Horses

You Go Back Home And Everything You Wished Was Different Is Still The Same And Everything You Wished Was The Same Is Different.

But This Man Had Set Down With A Hammer And Chisel And Carved Out A Stone Water Trough To Last Ten Thousand Years. Why Was That? What Was It That He Had Faith In? It Wasn't That Nothin' Would Change. Which Is What You Might Think, I Suppose. He Had To Know Better'n That. I've Thought About It A Good Deal. . . And I Have To Say That The Only Thing I Can Think Is That There Was Some Sort Of Promise In His Heart. And I Don't Have No Intentions Of Carvin' A Stone Water Trough. But I Would Like To Be Able To Make That Kind Of Promise. I Think That's What I Would Like Most Of All.

He Believed In God Even If He Was Doubtful Of Men's Claims To Know God's Mind. But That A God Unable To Forgive Was No God At All.

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

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

What Joins Men Together ... Is Not The Sharing Of Bread But The Sharing Of Enemies.

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.

Doomed Enterprises Divide Lives Forever Into The Then And Now

If You Could Breathe A Breath So Strong You Could Blow Out The Wolf. Like You Blow Out The Copo. Like You Blow Out The Fire From The Candela. The Wolf Is Made The Way The World Is Made. You Cannot Touch The World. You Cannot Hold It In Your Hand For It Is Made Of Breath Only.

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.

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.

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.

Men's Memories Are Uncertain And The Past That Was Differs Little From The Past That Was 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.

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.

I Got What I Needed Instead Of What I Wanted And That's Just About The Best Kind Of Luck You Can Have.

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.

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

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

Each The Others World Entire.

If One Were To Be A Person Of Value That Value Could Not Be A Condition Subject To Hazards Of Fortune. It Had To Be A Quality That Could Not Change. No Matter What.

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.

What Business Is It Of Yours Where I'm From, Friendo?

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.

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

It Is Supposed To True That Those Who Do Not Know History Are Condemned To Repeat It. I Don't Believe Knowing Can Save Us. What Is Constant In History Is Greed And Foolishness And Love Of Blood.

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

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.

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

He Rose And Turned Toward The Lights Of Town. The Tidepools Bright As Smelterpots Among The Dark Rocks Where The Phosphorescent Seacrabs Clambered Back. Passing Through The Salt Grass He Looked Back. The Horse Had Not Moved. A Ship's Light Winked In The Swells. The Colt Stood Against The Horse With Its Head Down And The Horse Was Watching, Out There Past Men's Knowing, Where The Stars Are Drowning And Whales Ferry Their Vast Souls Through The Black And Seamless Sea.

The Names Of The Cerros And The Sierras And The Deserts Exist Only On Maps. We Name Them That We Do Not Lose Our Way. Yet It Was Because The Way Was Lost To Us Already That We Have Made Those Names. The World Cannot Be Lost. We Are The Ones. And It Is Because These Names And These Coordinates Are Our Own Naming That They Cannot Save Us. They Cannot Find For Us The Way Again.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

You Have My Whole Heart. You Always Did.

He Can Give Me What You Cannot. Death Is Not A Lover. Oh Yes, He Is.

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.

The World To Come Must Be Composed Of What Is Past. No Other Material Is At Hand.

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.

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

Somewhere In The World Is The Most Invincible Man. Just As Somewhere Is The Most Vulnerable.

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.

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.

If Trouble Comes When You Least Expect It Then Maybe The Thing To Do Is To Always Expect It.

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.

A Man's At Odds To Know His Mind Cause His Mind Is Aught He Has To Know It With. He Can Know His Heart, But He Dont Want To. Rightly So. Best Not To Look In There. It Aint The Heart Of A Creature That Is Bound In The Way That God Has Set For It. You Can Find Meanness In The Least Of Creatures, But 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.

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

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

What Could A Child Know Of The Darkness Of God's Plan? Or How Flesh Is So Frail It Is Hardly More Than A Dream

People Apparently Only Read Mystery Stories Of Any Length. With Mysteries, The Longer The Better, And People Will Read Any Damn Thing. But The Indulgent, 800-page Books That Were Written A Hundred Years Ago Are Just Not Going To Be Written Anymore, And People Need To Get Used To That.

Every Moment In Your Life Is A Turning And Every One A Choosing. Somewhere You Made A Choice. All Followed To This. The Accounting Is Scrupulous. The Shape Is Drawn. No Line Can Be Erased. I Had No Belief In Your Ability To Move A Coin To Your Bidding. How Could You? A Person's Path Through The World Seldom Changes And Even More Seldom Will It Change Abruptly. And The Shape Of Your Path Was Visible From The Beginning.

He Rocked In The Swells, Floating Like The First Germ Of Life Adrift On The Earth's Cooling Seas, Formless Macule Of Plasm Trapped In A Vapor Drop And All Creation Yet To Come.

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.

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