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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.

-Cormac McCarthy

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The Night Sky Lies

Cormac McCarthy

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

Ever Step You Take Is Forever.

Where Men Can't Live Gods Fare No Better.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Have My Whole Heart. You Always Did.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

I Guess If Everybody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice.

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

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

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

Each The Others World Entire.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

You Never Know What Worse Luck Your Bad Luck Has Saved You From.

Fortune And Luck

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

There Is No Later. This Is Later.

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.

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

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

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

The Road Has Its Own Reasons And No Two Travelers Will Have The Same Understanding Of Those Reasons. If Indeed They Come To An Understanding Of Them At All.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

To See God Everywhere Is To See Him Nowhere.

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.

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

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.

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

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Choose Your Enemies Carefully 'cause They Will Define You Make Them Interesting 'cause In Some Ways They Will Mind You They're Not There In The Beginning But When Your Story Ends Gonna Last With You Longer Than Your Friend

There Is No Greater Monster Than Reason.

All The Pretty Horses

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

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

You Can Tell It Any Way You Want But That's The Way It Is. I Should Of Done It And I Didnt. And Some Part Of Me Has Never Quit Wishin I Could Go Back. And I Cant. I Didn't Know You Could Steal Your Own Life. And I Didnt Know That It Would Bring You No More Benefit Than About Anything Else You Might Steal. I Thinki Done The Best With Iti Knew How But Itstill Wasntmine. It Neverhas Been.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Here Beyond Men's Judgments All Covenants Were Brittle.

A Dream Inside A Dream Might Not Be A Dream.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Freedom Of Birds Is An Insult To Me.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

We're Carrying The Fire.

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.

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

All Human Love Is A Faint Type Of God's; An Echoing Note From A Harmonious Whole; A Feeble Spark From An Undying Flame; A Single Drop From An Unfathomed Sea: But God's Is Infinite; It Fills The Earth And Heaven, And The Broad, Trackless Realms Of Space.

What Do You Believe? I Believe That The Last And The First Suffer Equally. Pari Passu. Equally? It Is Not Alone In The Dark Of Death That All Souls Are One Soul. Of What Would You Repent? Nothing. Nothing? One Thing. I Spoke With Bitterness About My Life And I Said That I Would Take My Own Part Against The Slander Of Oblivion And Against The Monstrous Facelessness Of It And That I Would Stand A Stone In The Very Void Where All Would Read My Name. Of That Vanity I Recant All.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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W. Eugene Smith

Julia Margaret Cameron

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