Quotes About Survival

If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be? It would be this: the world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.

This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war.

A malign star kept him.

Where in this pukehole can a man get a drink? he said

We're carrying the fire.

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.

That the boy was all that stood between him and death.

The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.

Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?

I dont know what happens to country.

In the spring of the year birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers.

Nothing. 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. He held the boy shivering against him and counted each frail breath in the blackness.

We're going to be okay, aren't we Papa? Yes. We are. And nothing bad is going to happen to us. That's right. Because we're carrying the fire. Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.

In the grueling light that passed for day...

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.

Gray vines coiled leftward in this northern hemisphere, what winds them shapes the dogwhelk's shell. Weeds sprouted from cinder and brick.

Where man can't live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone.

I couldn't trust you with it. To do something with it. I don't want anybody talking about me. To say where I was or what I said when I was there. I mean, you could talk about me maybe. But nobody could say that it was me. I could be anybody. I think in times like these the less said the better. If something had happened and we were survivors and we met on the road then we'd have something to talk about. But we're not. So we don't.

You think that you can create a history of what has been. Present artifacts. A clutch of letters. A sachet in a dressing table drawer. But that's not what's at the heart of the tale. The problem is that what drives the tale will not survive the tale.

The more noise you make the more likely you are to be eaten. If you've no way to escape you keep silent. If birds couldnt fly they wouldnt sing. When you're defenseless you keep your opinions to yourself.

We're here on a need-to-know basis. There is no machinery in evolution for informing us of the existence of phenomena that do not affect our survival. What is here that we dont know about we dont know about.

Cormac McCarthy

Well. I think maybe it's harder to lose just one thing than to lose everything.

The next day on the far side of the mountain we encountered the two lads that had deserted us. Hangin upside down in a tree. They'd been skinned and I can tell ye it does very little for a man's appearance.