The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all.

Let not the Lord's dealing seem harsh, rough, or unfatherly, because it is unpleasant. When the Lord's will blows across your desire, it is best, in humility, to strike sail to Him, and to be willing to be led any way our Lord pleaseth. You know not what the lord is working out of this, but you shall hereafter. It is a point of denial of yourself to be as if you had not a will, but had made a free disposition of it to God, and to make use of His will for your own is both true holiness and your ease and peace.
The Lord is equal in his ways, but my guiltiness often overmastereth my believing. I would rather a cloud went over my comforts, than that my faith should be hurt. I desire to give no faith, no credit to my sorrow, when it suggests hard thoughts of Christ. Yet these thoughts awake with me in the morning. I am a dry tree I can neither plant nor water. I rue from my heart that I yielded so far to the law as to apprehend wrath in my Lord Jesus. For truly I am a debtor to His love, but I wish He would give me grace to learn to do without His comforts and to give thanks and believe when the sun is not in the firmament. I have no resting place for my faith but bare omnipotency and God's holy arm and good will.
I am glad that you go on to follow Christ in this dark and cloudy time. It were good to sell all other things for Him, for when all these days are over we shall find it our advantage that we have taken part with Christ. Oh, how sweet a thing it were to make our burdens light by framing our hearts to the burden and making our Lord's will a law. And we have good cause to wait patiently, for ere long our Master will be with us and bring everything to light. Happy are they that are found watching. Our sand-glass is not so long as to weary us in doing so. Time will eat away and root out our woes and sorrow. Our Heaven is in the bud and growing up to a harvest. Think not much of a storm upon the sea when Christ is in the ship.
I find one thing I saw not well before. When the saints are under trials and well humbled, little sins raise great cries within the conscience, and in prosperity conscience is a pope which gives dispensations and great latitude to our heart. Oh, how little we care for pardon at Christ's hands when we make dispensations! But when a cross without begets a heavier cross within, we play no longer with our idols. It is good still to be severe against ourselves, for we but transform God's mercy into an idol for turning of the grace of God into wantonness.
Happy are they that know God, wrath, justice, and sin, as they are in themselves. That Christ and a sinner should be one and have Heaven between them is the wonder of salvation. What more could love do? There are none but perfect garden flowers in Heaven, and the perfection of all is Christ. He graceth Heaven and all His Father's house with His presence. He is a Rose that beautifieth all the upper Garden of God. Let us then go on to meet with Him and to be filled with the sweetness of His love.

Jesus wept.

It was the quiet that pulled him out of his gloom.

"How can one be well... when one suffers morally? Is it possible to remain at ease in our time, if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna.

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.

An English professor in University said never to marry a woman who is obsessed with Jane Austen, and I never looked back. For better or for worse or until I finally decide to read her.

My goal is to go home and take a nap.

Chigurh smiled. We have a lot to talk about, he said. We'll be dealing with new people now. There wont be any more problems.

What happened to the old people?

They've moved on to other things. Not everyone is suited to this line of work. The prospect of outsized profits leads people to exaggerate their own capabilities. In their minds. They pretend to themselves that they are in control of events where perhaps they are not. And it is always one's stance upon uncertain ground that invites the attentions of one's enemies. Or discourages it.

And you? What about your enemies?

I have no enemies. I dont permit such a thing.

This is the last age of the world, for we are come as far more as we may along our path from what is natural. We herd and pen the beast that's born to roam. In huts we cling like snailshells to the fenland that it is in our great-fathers' way to stride across and then pass by. We cook the blood from out the earth and let it scab to crowns and daggers; pound our straight track through the crooked fields and trade with black-skins. Soon, the oceans rise and take us. Soon, the crashing of the stars.