Yesterday, Cormac McCarthy died of natural causes at 89.

McCarthy wrote Blood Meridian, the best book of all time. I have always loved to write, but after reading Blood Meridian, I felt like I could never write again.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

He wrote with with three- and four-word phrases that devastate and demand: “See the kid.” “A legion of horribles…”

Not six months before his death, he published his final novel and an accompanying novella. His biblical writing never waned.

If birds couldn’t fly they wouldn’t sing.

His truth was profound to me in nearly everything he wrote, simple and direct, honest and unflinching. He made me think about how I fit into a world where “the Earth is a globe in a void the truth there’s no up nor down to it.”

He loved mathematics and physics and saw the beauty in them. He wrote extensively about them in some of his work, while also seeing the beauty in landscape, something that was alive to him, seeing its magnificence even in cataclysm.

He walked out into the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of an intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

He reminded me that every day you get up is a fight worth fighting.

What’s the bravest thing you ever did? He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.

Until there are no more days.

And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale?