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ad4e368
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When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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42a3bea
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At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned
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nature
property
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a1596c2
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He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.
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pain
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Cormac McCarthy |
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737f5e3
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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02aeca1
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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.
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fate
self-determination
fear
life
order
ignorance
superstition
secrets
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Cormac McCarthy |
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b4a3038
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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e9eb62d
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The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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7500894
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Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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ea94c0b
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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.
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unhappiness
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Cormac McCarthy |
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2c4b37b
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I don't believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamor and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place. Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain and nothing more. And if that pain were actually collective inste..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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1801481
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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.
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war
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Cormac McCarthy |
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4b23a50
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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caf5838
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you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain't nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem. It's just a aggravation.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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f340208
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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.
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narcotics
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Cormac McCarthy |
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948750b
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There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.
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tavern
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Cormac McCarthy |
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ec5ace6
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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23fc9a0
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You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were.
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love
son
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Cormac McCarthy |
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34eab66
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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.
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reality
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Cormac McCarthy |
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17bade1
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But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse
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Cormac McCarthy |
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eb7c6ea
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If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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54a90fe
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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be27d91
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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239becb
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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ea5cd0a
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It is personal. That's what an education does. It makes the world personal.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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7a005cd
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I had two dreams about him after he died. I dont remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said no..
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hopeful
prophetic
mystery
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a996ef5
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I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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37c4c60
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Probably I dont believe in a lot of things that I used to believe in but that doesnt mean I dont believe in anything.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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4ff3d54
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On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.
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loneliness
life
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Cormac McCarthy |
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c31ae25
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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7dd3914
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He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
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literature
haunting
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Cormac McCarthy |
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d9259ee
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Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a899dfd
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All other trades are contained in that of war. Is that why war endures? No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. That's your notion. The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. ..
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war
games
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Cormac McCarthy |
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11cb875
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It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and..
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stars
desert
fire
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Cormac McCarthy |
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2b3bcdc
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When I was in school I studied biology. I learned that in making their experiments scientists will take some group--bacteria, mice, people--and subject that group to certain conditions. They compare the results with a second group which has not been disturbed. This second group is called the control group. It is the control group which enables the scientist gauge the effect of his experiment. To judge the significance of what has occurred. ..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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3e96b8d
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You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont 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. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who's layin there?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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e5ad734
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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3ada3b3
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Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.
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settling
foreigners
strangers
home
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Cormac McCarthy |
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1fe4819
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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6da1d8a
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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d522d82
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If there's one thing on this planet you don't look like it's a bunch of good luck walkin around.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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34654a8
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The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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74c64c9
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The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.
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sorrow
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Cormac McCarthy |
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41558d6
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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..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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56c6622
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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.
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travel
|
Cormac McCarthy |