What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle between reality and the subconscious, conveying how fearful thoughts can haunt us at night.
Cormac McCarthy's quote illustrates the inner turmoil that can arise when experiences or fears from reality seep into our dreams. It highlights the deep-seated anxieties that can manifest during the night, emphasizing the psychological effects of unresolved issues and the haunting nature of our fears, which can be more pronounced in the darkness of night when one's mind lacks distraction.
In practice
During a discussion about mental health, one might say, 'As Cormac McCarthy noted, what he could bear in the waking world he could not by night...'
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.
Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.
In an organic environment, every place is unique, and the different places also cooperate, with no parts left over, to create a global whole - a whole which can be identified by everyone who is part of it.
Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.
Police departments are always a reflection of the society that they serve. Is there such a thing as 'police culture?' Absolutely. Is that culture isolated form the surrounding society? Absolutely not.
If there were reason for these miseries, then into limits could I bind my woes. If the winds rages, doth not the sea wax mad, threat'ning the welkin with its big-swoll'n face? And wilt though have a reason for this coil? I am the sea. Hark how her sighs doth blow. She is the weeping welkin, I the earth.
Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.
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