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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.

-Cormac McCarthy

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I Don't Know What

Cormac McCarthy

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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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

There Is No Later. This Is Later.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

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.

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

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

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.

He'd Half Meant To Speak But Those Eyes Had Altered The World Forever In The Space Of A Heartbeat.

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

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

He Saw Very Clearly How All His Life Led Only To This Moment And All After Led To Nowhere At All. He Felt Something Cold And Soulless Enter Him Like Another Being And He Imagined That It Smiled Malignly And He Had No Reason To Believe That It Would Ever Leave.

This Country Was Filled With Violent Children Orphaned By War.

It Takes Very Little To Govern Good People. Very Little. And Bad People Cant Be Governed At All. Or If They Could I Never Heard Of It.

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.

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.

If Much In The World Were Mystery The Limits Of That World Were Not, For It Was Without Measure Or Bound And There Were Contained Within It Creatures More Horrible Yet And Men Of Other Colors And Beings Which No Man Has Looked Upon And Yet Not Alien None Of It More Than Were Their Own Hearts Alien In Them, Whatever Wilderness Contained There And Whatever Beasts.

He Said That Whether A Man's Life Was Writ In A Book Someplace Or Whether It Took Its Form Day By Day Was One And The Same For It Had But One Reality And That Was The Living Of It.

The Freedom Of Birds Is An Insult To Me.

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

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.

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

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

Hell Ain't Half Full.

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

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.

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

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.

Our Waking Life's Desire To Shape The World To Our Convenience Invites All Manner Of Paradox And Difficulty.

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.

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

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

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.

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.

Peering Down Into The Water Where The Morning Sun Fashioned Wheels Of Light, Coronets Fanwise In Which Lay Trapped Each Twig, Each Grain Of Sediment, Long Flakes And Blades Of Light In The Dusty Water Sliding Away Like Optic Strobes Where Motes Sifted And Spun.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

When One Has Nothing Left Make Ceremonies Out Of The Air And Breathe Upon Them.

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

Yet It Is The Narrative That Is The Life Of The Dream While The Events Themselves Are Often Interchangeable. The Events Of The Waking World On The Other Hand Are Forced Upon Us And The Narrative Is The Unguessed Axis Along Which They Must Be Strung.

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.

By Day The Banished Sun Circles The Earth Like A Grieving Mother With A Lamp.

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.

Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins.

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

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

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

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

Each The Others World Entire.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Guess If Everybody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice.

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.

Any Time You're Throwin Dirt You're Losin Ground.

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.

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.

If It Is Life That You Feel You Are Missing I Can Tell You Where To Find It. In The Law Courts, In Business, In Government. There Is Nothing Occurring In The Streets. Nothing But A Dumbshow Composed Of The Helpless And The Impotent.

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.

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.

A Goodlookin Horse Is Like A Goodlookin Woman, He Said. They're Always More Trouble Than What They're Worth. What A Man Needs Is Just One That Will Get The Job Done.

Scars Have The Strange Power To Remind Us That Our Past Is Real.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

There Is No God And We Are His Prophets.

There Is No God

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

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

Last Words Are Only Words.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Life Is A Memory, And Then It Is Nothing.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

This Is My Child, He Said. I Wash A Dead Man's Brains Out Of His Hair. That Is My Job.

Nothin Wounded Goes Uphill, He Said. It Just Dont Happen.

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

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

There's A Difference Between Quittin And Knowin When You're Beat.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

In History There Are No Control Groups. There Is No One To Tell Us What Might Have Been. We Weep Over The Might Have Been, But There Is No Might Have Been. There Never Was. It Is Supposed To Be 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 A Love Of Blood And This Is A Thing That Even God--who Knows All That Can Be Known--seems Powerless To Change.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Doomed Enterprises Divide Lives Forever Into The Then And Now

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

In History There Are No Control Groups. There Is No One To Tell Us What Might Have Been. We Weep Over The Might Have Been, But There Is No Might Have Been. There Never Was.

All The Pretty Horses

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.

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.

You Have My Whole Heart. You Always Did.

I Tried To Put Things In Perspective But Sometimes You're Just Too Close To It.

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

The Carrion Birds Sat About The Topmost Corners Of The Houses With Their Wings Outstretched In Attitudes Of Exhortation Like Dark Little Bishops.

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.

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.

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

Ever Is A Long Time. But The Boy Knew What He Knew. That Ever Is No Time At All.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

People Don't Pay Attention. And Then One Day There's An Accounting. And After That, Nothing Is The Same.

The Blackness He Woke To On Those Nights Was Sightless And Impenetrable. A Blackness To Hurt Your Ears With Listening. Often He Had To Get Up. No Sound But The Wind In The Trees. He Rose And Stood Tottering In That Cold Autistic Dark With His Arms Outheld For Balance While The Vestibular Calculations In His Skull Cranked Out Their Reckonings.

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

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.

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.

Pain For The Old Was No Longer A Surprise.

When The Shooting Starts Would You Rather Be Armed Or Legal?

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.

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

The Frailty Of Everything Revealed At Last. Old And Troubling Issues Resolved Into Nothingness And Night. The Last Instance Of A Thing Takes The Class With It. Turns Out The Light And Is Gone. Look Around You. Ever Is A Long Time. But The Boy Knew What He Knew. That Ever Is No Time At All.

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.

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.

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?

If A Dream Can Tell The Future It Can Also Thwart That Future. For God Will Not Permit That We Shall Know What Is To Come. He Is Bound To No One That The World Unfold Just So Upon Its Course And Those Who By Some Sorcery Or By Some Dream Might Come To Pierce The Veil That Lies So Darkly Over All That Is Before Them May Serve By Just That Vision To Cause That God Should Wrench The World From Its Heading And Set It Upon Another Course Altogether And Then Where Stands The Sorcerer? Where The Dreamer And His Dream?

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.

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

We Wouldnt Ever Eat Anybody, Would We? No. Of Course Not. Even If We Were Starving? We're Starving Now. You Said We Werent. I Said We Werent Dying. I Didnt Say We Werent Starving. But We Wouldnt. No. We Wouldnt. No Matter What. No. No Matter What. Because We're The Good Guys. Yes. And We're Carrying The Fire. And We're Carrying The Fire. Yes. Okay.

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

All The Pretty Horses

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

It Would Take A Hell Of A Wife To Beat No Wife At All.

They Lay Listening. 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. What If It Doesn't Fire? It Has To Fire. What If It Doesn't Fire? Could You Crush That Beloved Skull With A Rock? Is There Such A Being Within You Of Which You Know Nothing? Can There Be? Hold Him In Your Arms. Just So. The Soul Is Quick. Pull Him Toward You. Kiss Him. Quickly.

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