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

-Cormac McCarthy

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They Rode On And

Cormac McCarthy

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

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Point Is There Ain't No Point.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All The Pretty Horses

Each The Others World Entire.

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

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

I Guess If Everybody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

There Is No Such Joy In The Tavern As Upon The Road Thereto.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

We're Carrying The Fire.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Hell Ain't Half Full.

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.

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

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.

This Country Was Filled With Violent Children Orphaned By War.

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

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

All The Pretty Horses

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ah Me, Thou Destiny, Giver Of Evil Gifts.

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

Because The Question For Me Was Always Whether That Shape We See In Our Lives Was There From The Beginning Or Whether These Random Events Are Only Called A Pattern After The Fact. Because Otherwise We Are Nothing.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

Teaching English

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

There Is No God And We Are His Prophets.

There Is No God

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Got Here The Same Way The Coin Did.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Looked At A World Of Incredible Loveliness. Old Distaff Celt's Blood In Some Back Chamber Of His Brain Moved Him To Discourse With The Birches, With The Oaks. A Cool Green Fire Kept Breaking In The Woods And He Could Hear The Footsteps Of The Dead. Everything Had Fallen From Him. He Scarce Could Tell Where His Being Ended Or The World Began Nor Did He Care. He Lay On His Back In The Gravel, The Earth's Core Sucking His Bones, A Moment's Giddy Vertigo With This Illusion Of Falling Outward Through Blue And Windy Space, Over The Offside Of The Planet, Hurtling Through The High Thin Cirrus.

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

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.

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

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

Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

To See God Everywhere Is To See Him Nowhere.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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.

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.

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

You Have My Whole Heart. You Always Did.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

People Were Always Getting Ready For Tomorrow. I Didn't Believe In That. Tomorrow Wasn't Getting Ready For Them. It Didn't Even Know They Were There.

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

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)

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.

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

Doomed Enterprises Divide Lives Forever Into The Then And Now

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Life Is A Memory, And Then It Is Nothing.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Where Men Can't Live Gods Fare No Better.

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

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

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

Teaching Writing Is A Hustle.

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.

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.

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

Lying Under Such A Myriad Of Stars. The Sea’s Black Horizon. He Rose And Walked Out And Stood Barefoot In The Sand And Watched The Pale Surf Appear All Down The Shore And Roll And Crash And Darken Again. When He Went Back To The Fire He Knelt And Smoothed Her Hair As She Slept And He Said If He Were God He Would Have Made The World Just So And No Different.

It 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 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?

Pain For The Old Was No Longer A Surprise.

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

He Thought 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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