Cormac McCarthy, The Road Quotes

Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.

There is no God and we are his prophets.

People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there.

By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.

This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.

You have my whole heart. You always did.

He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.

Where men can't live gods fare no better.

Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?

Each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins.

What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

If only my heart were stone.

What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.

Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.

He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.

How 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.

Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie.

If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

In the grueling light that passed for day...

in that cold autistic dark.

There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.

Just take me with you. Please.I cant.Please, Papa.I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.

You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were.

In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like heathen candles.

Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and dark and cold beyond anything they'd yet encountered. Cold to crack the stones. To take your life.

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

...the space which [books] occupied was itself an expectation.

Carry the fire.

Do 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.

He 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.

People always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there.

Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.

And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly.

His mind was betraying him. Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep.

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.