"How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it."
Suttree is a semi-autobiographical novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 1979. Set in Knoxville, Tennessee, over a four-year period starting in 1950, the novel follows Cornelius Suttree, who has repudiated his former life of privilege to become a fisherman on the Tennessee River.
"In the long arcade of the bus station footfalls come back like laughter. He marches darkly toward his darkly marching shape in the glass of the depot door. His fetch come up from lifes other side like an autoscopic hallucination, Suttree and Antisuttree, hand reaching to the hand."
Suttree"Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save darks total restitution could appease."
Suttree"Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as in this flesh. This mawky wormbent tabernacle."
Suttree"I believe its the end of the world. What? Harrogate was looking at the pavement. He said it again. Look at me, Suttree said. He looked up. Sad pinched face, streaked with grime. Are you serious? Well what do you think about it? Suttree laughed. It aint funny, said Harrogate. Youre funny, you squirrely son of a bitch. Do you think the world will end just because youre cold? It aint just me. Its cold all over. Its not cold by Rufuss stove. Now get your ass up there. Ill see you later."
Suttree"Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them."
Suttree"He reached down and tapped Suttrees knee with his forefinger. You, my good buddy, are a fourteen carat gold plated son of a bitch. Thats what your problem is. And that being your problem, theres not a whole lot of people in sympathy with you. Or with your problem."
Suttree