Cormac McCarthy On Forgotten Worlds

"He [Judge Holden] gathered up the other artifacts and cast them also into the fire and he shook out the wagonsheet and folded it away among his possibles together with the notebook. Then he sat with his hands cupped in his lap and he seemed much satisfied with the world, as if his counsel had been sought at it's creation. A Tennessean named [Marcus] Webster had been watching him and he asked the judge what he aimed to do with those notes and sketches and the judge smiled and said that it was his intention to expunge them from the memory of man. Webster smiled and the judge laughed." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"What is true of one man, said the judge, is true of many. The people who once lived here are called the Anasazi. The old ones. ... The tools, the art, the building -- these things stand in judgement on the latter races. Yet there is nothing for them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery...." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"The rocks about in every sheltered place were covered with ancient paintings and the judge was soon among them copying out certain ones into his book to take away with him. ... Then he rose and with a piece of broken chert he scappled away one of the designs, leaving no trace of it only a raw place on the stone where it had been." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"The desert wind would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, nor host nor scribe, to tell any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place died." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all. The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

"Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not." -- Cormac McCarthy, author, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, 1985