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273cdf0
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When you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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d5f91eb
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And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? 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 ..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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0233bc8
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This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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731e7b0
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Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a1d3056
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When the shooting starts would you rather be armed or legal?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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cdf0e49
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If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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64512d7
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What business is it of yours where I'm from, friendo?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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48ce266
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You know that the things you put it your head stay there, right?' 'Yeah. But you remember some things, don't you?' 'Yeah. You remember the things you want to forget and forget the things you want to remember.
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cormac-mccarthy
remembering
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Cormac McCarthy |
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b4cbf47
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I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.
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writing-life
writing
inspirational-quotes
humor
earning-a-living
author-quotes
self-support
writing-quotes
gift
creative-process
talent
quotes
self-confidence
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Cormac McCarthy |
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c3d5249
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The truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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352afef
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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--seem..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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5585069
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That night he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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9b46f1e
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Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place.
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story
names
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a7aa964
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Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was ..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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b4a75fe
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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
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Cormac McCarthy |
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4dfcad3
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It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a6aef5f
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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1d39e7e
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The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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bec4ff2
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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 ..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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5342a6f
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What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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cbbbcd9
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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328f3b6
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Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and every thing that you have chosen to care for. There's the true brotherhood. The true fellowship. And everyone is a member for life. You tell me that my brother is my salvation? My salvation? Well then damn him. Damn him in every ..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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4ae67b0
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He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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0691b84
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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 ..
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west
storm
weather
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Cormac McCarthy |
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076d0f8
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The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her. Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her deli..
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earth-shattering
melancholy
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Cormac McCarthy |
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5f93bed
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What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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47b9321
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If you dont respect me what must you think of yourself?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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da0fb7f
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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.
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truth
opportunism
values
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Cormac McCarthy |
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baf2404
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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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Cormac McCarthy |
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5c3551a
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Each the others world entire.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a728693
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My daddy used to tell me not to chew on something that was eatin you.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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d6a75e5
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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4a18ec9
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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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death
job
child
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Cormac McCarthy |
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4007c77
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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 m..
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Cormac McCarthy |
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406238b
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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92f253e
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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 was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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6a59a85
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I look for the words, Professor. I look for the words because I believe that the words is the way to your heart.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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6fda3b2
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When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?
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Cormac McCarthy |
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d3d649b
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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.
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mortality
death
life
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Cormac McCarthy |
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3c56711
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Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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2cd3095
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He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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f511767
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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f69536b
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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.
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Cormac McCarthy |
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a9cea5f
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In the morning they came up out of the ravine and took to the road again. He'd carved the boy a flute from a piece of roadside cane and he took it from his coat and gave it to him. The boy took it wordlessly. After a while he fell back and after a while the man could hear him playing. A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin. The man turned and looked back at him. H..
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Cormac McCarthy |