Cormac McCarthy - The Road (2006)

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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.

Cormac McCarthy
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. Nobody would know it. It wouldn't make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else died too.

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

Cormac McCarthy
In his dream she was sick and he cared for her. The dream bore the look of sacrifice but he thought differently. He did not take care of her and she died alone somewhere in the dark and there is no other dream nor other waking world and there is no other tale to tell.

Cormac McCarthy
No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. 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.

Cormac McCarthy
Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, don't you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

Cormac McCarthy
Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

Cormac McCarthy
And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.

Cormac McCarthy
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.

Cormac McCarthy
I will do what I promised." He whispered. "No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone.

Cormac McCarthy
We wouldn't ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course not. Even if we were starving? We're starving now. You said we weren't. I said we weren't dying. I didn't say we weren't starving. But we wouldn't. No. We wouldn't. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. Okay.

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

Cormac McCarthy
What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.

Cormac McCarthy
If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.

Cormac McCarthy
Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.

Cormac McCarthy
Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.

Cormac McCarthy
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.

Cormac McCarthy