"you and i...we can do this...forever"

This is an excerpt from the book No Country For Old Men. It's the words of Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jone's character):

My grandpa Jack used to say that being a sheriff was one of the best jobs you could have bein a ex-sheriff one of the worst. Maybe lots of things is like that. We stayed gone and stayed gone. I done different things. Was a detective on the railroad for a while. By that time my wife wasnt all that sure about us coming back here. About me runnin. But she seen I wanted to  so that's what we done. She's a better person than me, which I will admit to anybody that cares to listen. Not that that's saying a whole lot. She's a better person than anybody I know. Period.

People think they know what they want but they generally dont. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways. Me I was always lucky. My whole life. I wouldnt be here otherwise. Scrapes I been in. But in the day I seen her come out of Kerr's Mercantile and cross the street and she passed me and I tipped my hat to her and got just almost a smile back, that was the luckiest.

People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.

Beautiful. Reading the book adds another dimension to the story because the movie left out most of Bell's monologues. It's a shame most people see No Country For Old Men as a cat and mouse thriller (the HK title of the movie translates roughly as: "The Deadly Case of the 2 million Dollars") when it's really the story of one man, a good man, and how he's losing touch with the word. It's about him not understanding the violence and evil of the world. It's about him being disgusted by moral degradation of society.

And this is where the importance of love comes in. In Taxi Driver (one of the most relevant and important films ever), Travis Bickle goes through a similar experience, and because he's a loner with nothing in his life, he snaps and starts shooting pimps (hilarious fact: the pimp that Bickle shoots is named Sport and he's played by Harvey Keitel. HAHAHAH A PIMP NAMED "SPORT", Scorsese is a fucking genus).

Now with Ed Tom Bell, because he has someone at home, he's able to just say "you know what, I don't understand this doggone mess and I'm just gonna step away and go home".

In the film, we know he has a wife and he loves her, but the novel paints a much more vivid picture, and thus we understand Bell's actions more. He realizes that he will never understand the evils of the world (he says this in the opening speech in the movie and a chapter in the book), the reason evil understands good but not vice versa is covered in The Dark Knight. As Joker put it best: Batman has rules, Joker does not.

The final lines spoken by Heath Ledger in the movie was, "You and I...we can do this forever"

Batman and Joker will do this forever because Batman has rules, he can never kill. All he can do is lock the Joker up and he'll always esacpe and do more evil deeds. It's an endless cycle.

Ed Tom Bell, Travis Bickle, Batman, they all the same cat. Just that Ed Tom Bell was lucky because according to him "sometimes people don't know what they want but they get it anyways". And he got it.