Blood Meridian Quotes

“There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.”

“War was always here.”

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible.”

“Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”

“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”

“A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don’t want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there.”

“They were watching, out there past men’s knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.”

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.”

“That man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”

“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”

“Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.”

“When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.”

“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures.”

“This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification.”

“War is the truest form of divination.”

“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”

“War is god.”

“War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.”

“Men are born for games. Nothing else.”