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.
Cormac McCarthyWhen the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.
Cormac McCarthyHe 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.
Cormac McCarthyThe world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.
Cormac McCarthyOnce there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
Cormac McCarthy