Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty

The prison was no more than a small walled village and within it occurred a constant seethe of barter and exchange in everything from radios and blankets down to matches and buttons and shoenails and within this bartering ran a constant struggle for status and position. Underpinning all of it like the fiscal standard in commercial societies lay a bedrock of depravity and violence where in an egalitarian absolute every man was judged by a single standard and that was his readiness to kill. They slept and in the morning it all began again. They fought back to back and picked each other up and fought again. At noon Rawlins could not chew. They’re goin to kill us, he said.