01UndatedHe came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank. He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him?Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
02UndatedSuppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
03UndatedRich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
04UndatedHe thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality,known or not.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
05Undatedthe beast who dreams of man and has so dreamt in running dreams a hundred thousand years and more. Dreams of that malignant lesser god come pale and naked and alien to slaughter all his clan and kin and rout them from their house. A god insatiable whom no ceding could appease nor any measure of blood.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
06UndatedEach leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
07UndatedDo you think I lie to you?No.But you think I might lie to you about dying.Yes.Okay. I might. But we're not dying.Okay.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
08UndatedThe stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. but I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It don't move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that's what it is.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
10UndatedThey laid up in the shade of a rock shelf until past noon, scratching out a place in the gray lava dust to sleep, and they set forth in the afternoon down the valley following the war trail and they were very small and they moved very slowly in the immensity of that landscape.Come evening they hove toward the rimrock again and Sproule pointed out a dark stain on the face of the barren cliff. It looked like the black from old fires. The kid shielded his eyes. The scalloped canyon walls rippled in the heat like drapery folds.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
11UndatedIt is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God - who knows all that can be known - seems powerless to change.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
12UndatedFor this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet these are the selfsame tale and contain as well all within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
13UndatedI tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you're just too close to it.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
14UndatedThis place aint the same. It never will be. Maybe we've all got a little crazy. I guess if everbody went crazy together nobody would notice, what do you think?Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
15UndatedIt looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it? Yes. It does. There's a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah? I think so. I guess there are. The life you've lived, for one. Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
17UndatedYou can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me.... You'll be all right.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
18UndatedAnd after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of [the strangers'] smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had the power to heal men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
19UndatedI never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doingCormac McCarthy / quote ↗
20UndatedHis head was pounding and his vision skewed in some way and he was vaguely amazed at being alive and not sure that it was worth it.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
21UndatedThis was the perfect day of his childhood. This the day to shape the days upon.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
22UndatedBy day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
23UndatedLive by yourself and you bound to talk yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you're light in the head. But I reckon it's all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don't understand and cain't answer if he did.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
24UndatedHow would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said.I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.Cormac McCarthy / quote ↗
