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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?

-Cormac McCarthy

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Rage Is Really Only

Cormac McCarthy

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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?

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

He Had Divested Himself Of The Little Cloaked Godlet And His Other Amulets In A Place Where They Would Not Be Found In His Lifetime And He'd Taken For Talisman The Simple Human Heart Within Him.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

The Man Smiled At Him A Sly Smile. As If They Knew A Secret Between Them, These Two. Something Of Age And Youth And Their Claims And The Justice Of Those Claims. And Of Their Claims Upon Them. The World Past, The World To Come. Their Common Transciencies. Above All A Knowing Deep In The Bone That Beauty And Loss Are One.

There Is No God And We Are His Prophets.

There Is No God

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

To See God Everywhere Is To See Him Nowhere.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

When We're All Gone At Last Then There'll Be Nobody Here But Death And His Days Will Be Numbered Too. He'll Be Out In The Road There With Nothing To Do And Nobody To Do It To. He'll Say: Where Did Everybody Go? And That's How It Will Be. What's Wrong With That?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Fear Of An Enemy Can Often Blind Men To Other Hazards, Not Least The Shape Which They Themselves Make In The World.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

Hell Ain't Half Full.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

He May Be Dead; Or He May Be Teaching English.

Teaching English

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It Was The Nature Of His Profession That His Experience With Death Should Be Greater Than For Most And He Said That While It Was True That Time Heals Bereavement It Does So Only At The Cost Of The Slow Extinction Of Those Loved Ones From The Heart's Memory Which Is The Sole Place Of Their Abode Then Or Now. Faces Fade, Voices Dim. Seize Them Back, Whispered The Sepulturero. Speak With Them. Call Their Names. Do This And Do Not Let Sorrow Die For It Is The Sweetening Of Every Gift.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

Men Believe Death's Elections To Be A Thing Inscrutable Yet Every Act Invites The Act Which Follows And To The Extent That Men Put One Foot Before The Other They Are Accomplices In Their Own Deaths As In All Such Facts Of Destiny.

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

Things Separate From Their Stories Have No Meaning. They Are Only Shapes. Of A Certain Size And Color. A Certain Weight. When Their Meaning Has Become Lost To Us They No Longer Have Even A Name. The Story On The Other Hand Can Never Be Lost From Its Place In The World For It Is That Place.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Dream Inside A Dream Might Not Be A Dream.

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.

I Guess If Everybody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice.

If The Rule You Followed Brought You To This, Of What Use Was The Rule?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Got Here The Same Way The Coin Did.

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.

Pain For The Old Was No Longer A Surprise.

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

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Men Say They Only Learn This But He Said That No Creature Can Learn That Which His Heart Has No Shape To Hold.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

All The Pretty Horses

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

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?

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.

Teaching Writing Is A Hustle.

Whatever Exists, He Said. Whatever In Creation Exists Without My Knowledge Exists Without My Consent. He Looked About At The Dark Forest In Which They Were Bivouacked. He Nodded Toward The Specimens He'd Collected. These Anonymous Creatures, He Said, May Seem Little Or Nothing In The World. Yet The Smallest Crumb Can Devour Us. Any Smallest Thing Beneath Yon Rock Out Of Men's Knowing. Only Nature Can Enslave Man And Only When The Existence Of Each Last Entity Is Routed Out And Made To Stand Naked Before Him Will He Be Properly Suzerain Of The Earth.

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.

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

I Think By The Time You're Grown You're As Happy As You're Goin To Be. You'll Have Good Times And Bad Times, But In The End You'll Be About As Happy As You Was Before. Or As Unhappy. I've Knowed People That Just Never Did Get The Hang Of It.

It's Not About Knowing Who You Are. It's About Thinkin You Got There Without Takin Anything With You. Your Notions About Startin Over. Or Anybody's. You Dont Start Over. That's What It's About. Every Step You Take Is Forever. You Can't Make It Go Away. None Of It.

Knowing Who You Are

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.

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

Ever Step You Take Is Forever.

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

You Have To Carry The Fire." I Don't Know How To." Yes, You Do." Is The Fire Real? The Fire?" Yes It Is." Where Is It? I Don't Know Where It Is." Yes You Do. It's Inside You. It Always Was There. I Can See It.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

We're Carrying The Fire.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Personal. That's What An Education Does. It Makes The World Personal.

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

They Watched Storms Out There So Distant They Could Not Be Heard, The Silent Lightning Flaring Sheetwise And The Thin Black Spine Of The Mountain Chain Fluttering And Sucked Away Again In The Dark. They Saw Wild Horses Racing On The Plain, Pounding Their Shadows Down The Night And- Leaving In The Moonlight A Vaporous Dust Like The Palest Stain Of Their Passing.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

The Point Is There Ain't No Point.

Ah Me, Thou Destiny, Giver Of Evil Gifts.

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

The Wind Sounded Of Mother Earth's Forsaken And Abandoned Cries.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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