Quotessence
Home / Books / The Road

The Road

Book by Cormac McCarthy · 14 quotes · World, Ifs, Cormac Mccarthy

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldIfsCormac MccarthyAshesMenSaidBoysColdDarkThe RoadEyeGoneHeartLastsLifeMadeBlackChildrenDarknessDeath

The Road Quotes

“The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.”

WorldTryingRealityNamesGoneForeverColorBirdSacredFollowingDrawingCoreBeing TruePreservesHeatFragileEntityOblivionLike SomethingShrinkingIdiom
Book:The Road
Create image

“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.”

MenWorldMadeHandsWhiteMysteryBecomingMountainStandingFlowAll ThingsDestructionPatternsEdgesCurrentsStreamsMapsBrooksPolishedMossMazesAmberTroutRoad MapsFinsWonder And Mystery
Book:The Road
Create image

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

WorldTwoMomentsLightEyeRunningEarthUniverseBlackAnimalDarknessSunSawsDogColdSorrowAbsolutesBlindCrushGrayFoxesRelentlessVacuumsBorrowedTremblingAbsolute TruthHuntedBrief MomentsBorrowed Time
Book:The Road
Create image

“Years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. He picked up one of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. He'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation.”

WorldYearsBookLyingValuesWaterSpacePagesExpectationsLaysLibraryHeavyRageRuinsDeceitPoolSmallestShelves
Book:The Road
Create image

“He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.”

IfsWorldHeartWaterSilenceAirWindListeningColdMy HeartLateStonesBreathsLaysWoodsVoidAshesTremblingBleakBedrock
Book:The Road
Create image

“Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”

IfsWorldMadeSaidDifferentLyingStarsBlackFireSeaHairRoseSandHorizonShorePaleCrashSurfBarefootLiterary Love
Book:The Road
Create image