The Road by Cormac McCarthy

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

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