Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Cormac McCarthy

Quote by Cormac McCarthy

“He moved north all day and in the long light of the evening he saw from that high rimland the collision of armies remote and silent upon the plain below. The dark little horses circled and the landscape shifted in the paling light and the mountains beyond brooded in the darkening silhouette. The distant horsemen rode and parried and a faint drift of smoke passed over them and they moved on up the deepening shade of the valley floor leaving behind them the shapes of mortal men who had lost their lives in that place. He watched all this pass below him mute and ordered and senseless until the warring horsemen were gone in the sudden rush of dark that fell over the desert. All that land lay cold and blue and without definition and the sun shone solely on the high rocks where he stood. He moved on and soon he was in darkness himself and the wind came up off the desert and frayed wires of lightning stood again and again along the western terminals of the world. He made his way along the escarpment until he came to a break in the wall cut through by a canyon running back into the mountains. He stood looking down into this gulf where the tops of the twisted evergreens hissed in the wind and then he started down.”

Quote by Cormac McCarthy

Work

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy

American novelist known for his profound literary style and rich imagination. His notable works include 'The Border Trilogy' and 'No Country for Old Men'. more

You May Also Like

“Men don't cry. So I destroyed my liver drowned my grief in bottles, watching the glass empty like my soul, sip by bitter sip. Men don't cry. So I destroyed my lungs, turned them into chimneys, letting smoke carry the weight of what I couldn't say. Men don't cry. We were told to hold it in, to be strong to bear it quietly, So we found other ways to bleed other ways to break, because even when it hurt, tears were never an Option.”

“With angry sulking men, the secret was holding your ground. You didn't get rebellious, no—that was asking for a slap to the face. But you didn't self-flagellate, either. When you acted like you ought to be whipped, that only confirmed to them that you should. One should never cower. The secret rather was to keep talking as if you deserved no punishment at all, and then to distract them with something they wanted more than they wanted to hurt you.”