You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of the past and how every day contributes to the overall fabric of our lives.
Cormac McCarthy's quote reflects on how our experiences and the days we live shape who we are. It suggests that while we might focus on the present or future, it is the accumulation of past experiences that truly defines our existence. Each day, including 'yesterday', adds to the narrative of our lives, and to disregard the past is to overlook the foundation upon which our current reality stands.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the value of learning from our mistakes, this quote can inspire the audience.
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.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
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.
Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.
If they want to come out and watch me paint or dig potatoes or mend fences, I don't care. I don't do interviews not because I have anything to hide, but when you retire, the word has a meaning to me. It's a place in life, a part of the journey. You just don't quit work. You develop an attitude where you can do what you please.
Sorrows come to stretch out places in the heart for joy.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.
We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.
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