Ryan Holiday

I don't know.

I don't think I was a big reader of fiction except for, you know, the kinds of books that you would be assigned in school.

I don't think I knew that there was books like this out there.

I don't know if I knew about All the Pretty Horses or Blood Meridian yet, but I was much more a nonfiction reader at that point in my life.

Yeah, I mean, it's dark and depressing and alarming.

I think I was struck by the beauty of the writing, the sparseness of it.

I do remember right around that time seeing the movie Children of Men, which was another, it's based on a novel.

as well, but another sort of similarly apocalyptic work.

So that was probably coloring my experience.

But I just remember thinking, wow, this is really cool.

I should read this guy's other stuff.

But being a sophomore in college or thereabouts, I don't have kids.

I'm not married.

I guess it's a testament to how good the book is that it can still be read and experienced even if you really can't even conceive of the central sort of relationship driving the book.

I

The thing I took most out of the book was the image of carrying the fire.

I took that as the central message of the book that there is this kind of goodness, morality, earnestness that we have in us, an innateness that

the job of both the parent and the person surviving in a fallen, broken, you know, evil world is to keep that fire alive, to carry it.

And I think that was what I was most struck by.

And I remember a few years later, I bought or someone gave me a Zippo lighter that just said, carry the fire on it.