880 Quotes by Cormac McCarthy

the 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.

I jumped for it and lit in a snowbank and what I'm goin to tell you you'll think peculiar but it's the god's truth. That was in nineteen and thirty one and if I live to be a hunnerd year old I dont think I'll ever see anything as pretty as that train on fire goin up that mountain and around the bend and them flames lightin up the snow and the trees and the night.

At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned

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

A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember.

She looks like her face caught fire and they beat it out with a rake

They camped that night on the foreplain at the foot of a talus slope and the murder that had been reckoned upon took place.

Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place.

The judge like a great ponderous djinn stepped through the fire and the flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element.