Cormac McCarthy excerpts

''...an old man came forward and addressed him in a spanish he could scarcely understand, speaking with great earnestness into the boy's eyes and holding his saddle fore and aft so that the boy sat almost in his arms.  He was dressed in odd and garish fashion and his clothes were embroidered with signs that had about them the geometric look of instructions, perhaps a game.  He wore jewelry of jade and silver and his hair was long and blacker than his age would seem to warrant.  He told the boy that although he was huérfano still he must cease his wanderings and make for himself some place in the world because to wander in this way would become for him a passion and by this passion he would become estranged from men and so ultimately from himself.  He said 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 and therefore to know it one must look there and come to know these hearts and to do this one must live with men and not simply pass among them.  He said that while the huérfano might feel that he no longer belonged among men he must set the feeling aside for he contained within him a largeness of spirit which men could see and that men would wish to know him and that the world would need him even as he needed the world for they were one.  Lastly he said that while this itself was a good thing like all good things it was also a danger.''



and another one...

''Long voyages often lose themselves. You will see. 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.  Listen to the corridos[stories] of the country.  They will tell you.  Then you will see in your own life what is the cost of things.  Perhaps it is true that nothing is hidden.  Yet many do not wish to see what lies before them in plain sight.  You will see.  The shape of the road is the road.  There is not some other road that wears that shape but only the one.  And every voyage begun upon it will be completed.''

-Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

the darnedest thing... books make me think!