Quotes from Cormac McCarthy, The Road

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

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.

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

There is no God and we are his prophets.

Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.

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.

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

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

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

in that cold autistic dark.

In the grueling light that passed for day...

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.

You have my whole heart. You always did.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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