The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

by Cormac McCarthy

Do you know what I find particularly galling, he told them. It’s having to share the women with you lot. To listen to you fuckwits holding forth and to see some lissome young thing leaning forward breathlessly with that barely contained frisson with which we are all familiar the better to inhale without stint an absolute plaguebreath of bilge and bullshit as if it were the word of the prophets.

I shall not die for thee oh woman of body like a swan. I was nurtured by a cunning man. Oh thin palm, oh white bosom. I shall not die for thee.

All physical history eventually turns out to be a chimera. She said that even if you place your hands on the stones of ancient buildings you’ll never really believe that the world which they’ve survived had at one time the same reality as the one you’re standing in. History is belief.

I’ve studied much and learned little.