Quotes from The Orchard Keeper

Cormac McCarthy ·  256 pages

Rating: (6.4K votes)


“They are gone now. Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone. Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses. No avatar, no scion, no vestige of that people remains. On the lips of the strange race that now dwells there their names are myth, legend, dust.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“Toward early morning he woke, sat up quickly and looked about him. It was still dark and the fire had long since died, still dark and quiet with that silence that seems to be of itself listening, an astral quiet where planets collide soundlessly, beyond the auricular dimension altogether. He listened. Above the black ranks of trees the mid-summer sky arched cloudless and coldly starred. He lay back and stared at it and after a while he slept.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“And he no longer cared to tell which were things done and which dreamt.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“Evening. The dead sheathed in the earth's crust and turning the slow diurnal of the earth's wheel, at peace with eclipse, asteroid, the dusty novae, their bones brindled with mold and the celled marrow going to frail stone, turning, their fingers laced with root, at one with Tut and Agamemnon, with the seed and the unborn.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“They passed, leaving a trail of foxfire shuffled up out of the wet leaves like stars plowed in a ship's wake.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper



“In the dark glass where the road poured down their cigarettes rose and fell like distant semaphores above the soft green dawn of the dashlights.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“I busted him and he busted me. That's fair ain't it?

No, I ain't forgettin about jail. You think because he arrested me that thows it off again I reckon? I don't. It's his job. It's what he gets paid for. To arrest people that break the law. And I didn't jest break the law, I made a livin at it. More money in three hours than any workin man makes in a week. Why is that? Because it's harder work? No, because a man who makes a livin doin somethin that has to get him in jail sooner or later has to be paid for the jail, has to be paid in advance not jest for his time breakin the law but for the time he has to build when he gets caught at it. So I been paid. Gifford's been paid. Nobody owes nobody. If it wadn't for Gifford, the law, I wouldn't of had the job I had blockadin and if it wadn't for me blockadin, Gifford wouldn't of had his job arrestin blockaders. Now who owes who?”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“Housecats is smart too. Smarter’n a dog or a mule. Folks thinks they ain’t on account of you cain’t learn em nothin, but what it is is that they won’t learn nothin. They too smart.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


“Well, I’ll tell ye, they ain’t no more heroes. The”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper


About the author

Cormac McCarthy
Born place: in Providence, Rhode Island, The United States
Born date July 20, 1933
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“There has to be some way this won’t end in tragedy. Why can’t Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after? It’s as if the universe won’t abide such a strong connection in such a disconnected world, as if our connection defies the natural order.”
― Kitty Thomas, quote from The Last Girl


“I’m sick of always doing the professional thing for prudential reasons.’ I”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look


“I love being reminded that existence itself is all about the tangling of souls.”
― Carolyn Mackler, quote from Tangled


“فكّروا في الكلمات الجديدة التي كان علينا أن نتعلمها خلال الثلاثين سنة الماضية : وهّابي، جهادي، أفغان عرب، عاصفة الصحراء، فتوى، القاعدة .
ما الذي تشترك فيه هذه الكلمات؟”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia


“God loves you just as you are. Pray from where you are.”
― Christina Haag, quote from Come to the Edge


Interesting books

Ethics
(10.5K)
Ethics
by Baruch Spinoza
Tisha: The Wonderful True Love Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness
(4.9K)
Eden
(16.4K)
Eden
by Jamie McGuire
Castle in the Air
(29K)
Castle in the Air
by Diana Wynne Jones
Meant to Be
(15.1K)
Meant to Be
by Lauren Morrill
It Happened One Wedding
(12.6K)
It Happened One Wedd...
by Julie James

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.