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.
We do not have to die to enter the kingdom of Heaven, In fact we have to be fully alive. When we are truly alive we see that the tree is part of Heaven and we are also part of Heaven. The whole universe is conspiring to reveal this to us. Peace is available and when we touch it everything becomes real. We become ourselves, fully alive in the present moment.
In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons.
The deceit, the lie of the devil consists of this, that he wishes to make man believe that he can live without God's Word. Thus he dangles before man's fantasy a kingdom of faith, of power, and of peace, into which only he can enter who consents to the temptations; and conceals from men that he, as the devil, is the most unfortunate and unhappy of beings, since he is finally and eternally rejected by God.
Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
I do not oppose the insane asylum - but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.
Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.
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