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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.

-Cormac McCarthy

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You Think When You

Cormac McCarthy

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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.

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

Your God Must Once Have Stood At A Dawn Of Infinite Possibilities, And This Is What He's Made Of It. You Tell Me That I Want God's Love? I Don't. Perhaps I Want Forgiveness, But There's No-one To Ask It Of. And There's No Going Back, There's No Setting Things Right, There's Only The Hope Of Nothingness.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Last Words Are Only Words.

Ever Step You Take Is Forever.

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

This Country Was Filled With Violent Children Orphaned By War.

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

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

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.

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.

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

If People Knew The Story Of Their Lives How Many Would Then Elect To Live Them? People Speak About What Is In Store. But There Is Nothing In Store. The Day Is Made Of What Has Come Before. The World Itself Must Be Surprised At The Shape Of That Which Appears. Perhaps Even God.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 World Shrinking Down About A Raw Core Of Parsible Entities. The Names Of Things Slowly Following Those Things Into Oblivion. Colors. The Names Of Birds. Things To Eat. Finally The Name Of Things One Believed To Be True. More Fragile Than He Would Have Thought. How Much Was Gone Already? The Sacred Idiom Shorn Of Its Referents And So Of Its Reality. Drawing Down Like Something Trying To Preserve Heat. In Time To Wink Out Forever.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

War Was Always Here. Before Man Was, War Waited For Him. The Ultimate Trade Awaiting Its Ultimate Practitioner.

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

Fortune And Luck

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

There Is No Later. This Is Later.

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.

Hell Ain't Half Full.

The Freedom Of Birds Is An Insult To Me.

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

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

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

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.

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

The World Was New Each Day For God So Made It Daily. Yet It Contained Within It All The Evils As Before, No More, No Less.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

In The 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave.

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

They Spoke Less And Less Between Them Until At Last They Were Silent Altogether As Is Often The Way With Travelers Approaching The End Of A Journey.

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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'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.

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.

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.

Here Beyond Men's Judgments All Covenants Were Brittle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Teaching English

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.

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

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

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.

Only Now Is The Child Finally Divested Of All That He Has Been. His Origins Are Become Remote As Is His Destiny And Not Again In All The World's Turning Will There Be Terrains So Wild And Barbarous To Try Whether The Stuff Of Creation May Be Shaped To Man's Will Or Whether His Own Heart Is Not Another Kind Of Clay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Dream Inside A Dream Might Not Be A Dream.

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

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

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.

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.

To See God Everywhere Is To See Him Nowhere.

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

All The Pretty Horses

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.

Where Men Can't Live Gods Fare No Better.

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

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

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

All The Pretty Horses

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.

We're Carrying The Fire.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is No Greater Monster Than Reason.

All The Pretty Horses

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.

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

Teaching Writing Is A Hustle.

Life Is A Memory, And Then It Is Nothing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

In The End We All Come To Be Cured Of Our Sentiments. Those Whom Life Does Not Cure Death Will. The World Is Quite Ruthless In Selecting Between The Dream And Reality, Even Where We Will Not. Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting. I've Thought A Great Deal About My Life And My Country. I Think There Is Little That Can Be Truly Known. My Family Has Been Fortunate. Others Were Less So. As They Are Often Quick To Point Out.

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.

Probably I Dont Believe In A Lot Of Things That I Used To Believe In But That Doesnt Mean I Dont Believe In Anything.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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