The House at the End of the World

Patience, steadiness, and hope are healthier than anger;

When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity. Whole societies do go mad. History is filled with chilling examples

She reads aloud from Eliot—“‘I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing’”—and then she closes the book and sets it aside.

She is true on course, and the night has not yet caught fire, and she means to stay on course no matter what.

No hamlet in America remains so safe that Beaver Cleaver can ride his bike into the evening without at least some risk of being abducted, raped, beheaded, and discarded in a dump.

Failure to be prepared is a failure to hope.

they, too, can be scrubbed away in every sense. All but a few will decide that silence and forgetfulness is the best response to such power.” “All we need is a few to expose it all.” “Maybe. The internet is the greatest repository of knowledge in history. But when

In the years ahead, the world becoming will have its monsters, although they will be exclusively of this world, born of man and woman, innocent and harmless until they are transformed by envy and hatred and ideology.

Do you really believe the past is past? I think the past might be our future, that we’re busy laying the groundwork for new Dachaus, new Auschwitzes, all in the name of compassion, progress, justice, prosperity. Of the hard lessons that humanity learns, how many are retained? How very few? The passion of angry ideologues, the ignorance of the arrogant, the ferocity of utopians—how can such people lead the world to anything but its end?

The storm inside her is quieter than the tempest outside, but it’s a storm nonetheless.

During those dark weeks, she learned definitively that anger can never conjure justice where justice does not already exist.

My point is, it’s clear to me that any great artist—musician, painter, sculptor, a fine prose stylist—is on a subconscious level a mathematician and a carpenter and a mason and an engineer. A great artist intuitively understands how the world is built and how it works and how people best fit into it. That’s how they’re able to create beauty—because they know the truth of things. An artist is a mathematician who knows the formulas of the soul. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

Your cousin Paulie, he has prostate cancer. Who knew he’s man enough to have a prostate?

I think the past might be our future, that we’re busy laying the groundwork for new Dachaus, new Auschwitzes, all in the name of compassion, progress, justice, prosperity.

There is something sacred about great suffering, and it is the sacredness that makes the pain endurable.

says, “If you’re concerned about the environmental effects of the flatulence of cattle, don’t be. It’s a myth. What’ll kill us all is the flatulence of politicians.

Conversely, if she has learned one thing about herself that is the most discouraging, it is that she is immune to the illusions in which so many people take comfort. Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance. She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt. Such innate clearheadedness ensures that comforting illusions will elude her, though there are times, as now, when she might welcome the comfort of them. When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity. Whole societies do go mad. History is filled with chilling examples. Joe Smith knew it when he built this house.

She can be bent so severely that it doesn’t seem as though she can ever straighten herself out again, but she always does. She gets on with getting on.

Every year in this war and that, even in our own cities, countless children are killed, while those who spray the bullets—or plant the roadside bomb, authorize the use of nerve gas, send the drone with the Hellfire missile that strikes the wrong target—shed not a tear, referring to those tender deceased as mere “collateral damage,” if they acknowledge

However, she’s now been reminded of what she never should have forgotten—that the true prince of this world isn’t Moloch. The prince of this world is the father of lies, and his followers are legion. Those who control the narrative

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, which he painted in 1781.

The Fates are master sharpshooters, and the easy target is the one who’s standing still.

The directness of his stare suggests her every word matters to him, and she feels that she has his sincere sympathy rather than unwanted pity.

Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance.

Does anyone take responsibility for what they screw up anymore? Maybe they say they do, but do they really? Don’t they try to hide the truth or blame others?

AN ARTIST IS A MATHEMATICIAN WHO KNOWS THE FORMULAS OF THE SOUL

God made horses and dogs so we poor misguided human beings will have constant examples by which to better ourselves.

One-way caring is the virtue of virtues, honey. It’s why we’re on this world.

Libby is just a girl, but it was a girl of her age who raised the siege of Orléans in 1428 and broke the English army, and no one can say what a girl might have the capacity to endure or achieve.

There is no end of the world, Michael, because in every end, there’s a new beginning.