# Quote — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

> Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

- Author: [Cormac McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [Blood Meridian](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian.md)
- Page: 260
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian#Quotations) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/suppose-two-men

## More from this book

> Spanish: "People say the coyote is a witch. Most of the time, the witch is a coyote."

p. 75 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/spanish-people-say.md)

> Where is yesterday? Where is Glanton and Brown and where is the priest? He leaned closer. Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains? Where the ladies, ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the governor's ball when you were a hero anointed with the blood of the enemies of the republic you'd elected to defend? And where is the fiddler and where the dance?

p. 344 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/where-is-yesterday.md)

> This is a terrible place to die in.
>
> Where’s a good one?

p. 217 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/this-is-a-terrible.md)