Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"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."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"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."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"whoever approaches his goal dances"

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"Deployed upon that plain they moved in a constant elision, ordained agents of the actual dividing out the world which they encountered and leaving what had been and what would never be alike extinguished on the ground behind them."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"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."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry (of life) will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge of the world that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"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."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"The judge like a great ponderous djinn stepped through the fire and the flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

"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."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West