“If only my heart were stone.”

— Cormac McCarthy , book The Road

Source: The Road

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Cormac McCarthy 270

American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter 1933

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Context: Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
Ye shall grow a part
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Context: I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion. I need sunshine and paving tones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he exited!

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Variant: My crown is in my heart, not on my head; not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content, a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.
Source: King Henry VI, Part 3

“O heart, with the very stones or bricks.”

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“Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

I, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known —
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
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But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.