The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)

by Cormac McCarthy

Between their acts and their ceremonies lies the world and in this world the storms blow and the trees twist in the wind and all the animals that God has made go to and fro yet this world men do not see. They see the acts of their own hands or they see that which they name and call out to one another but the world between is invisible to them.

He thought to become again the child he never was.

he said that no man can see his life until his life is done and where then to make a mending?

There are no separate journeys for there are no separate men to make them. All men are one and there is no other tale to tell.

God needs no witness. Neither to Himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man’s opinion of it.

The Tarahumara had watered here a thousand years and a good deal of what could be seen in the world had passed this way. Armored Spaniards and hunters and trappers and grandees and their women and slaves and fugitives and armies and revolutions and the dead and the dying.

You think it’s worse to be cold or be hungry? I think it’s worse to be both.

We could lose their track. We wont lose it. What if the ground turns off hard and rocky? You thought about that? What if the world ends, said Billy. You thought about that? Yeah. I thought about it.

You got good eyes, she said. Yes mam, he said. I always did. Well I guess so, she said. You dont normally start out with bad ones and they get better.