The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

“I’ve known cowards and I’ve known heroes,” he says. “The heroes were always ruled by their hearts; the cowards, by their brains. Don’t forget that. Heroes don’t calculate or calibrate. They do what is right.”

The world is composed of people who are hungry, and those who are not hungry. It goes back to energy, to entropy. If you are hungry for food, you will be hungry for God, too. Or politics, or some kind of love. The people who are hungry have holes in them that can’t be filled. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen starving people at peace with the world. I’ve been in villages where starving people gave me their supper. Food doesn’t have anything to do with it; it’s about the deeper kind of hunger, those holes.