Quotes from The Road

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“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, quote from The Road

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“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, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“What's the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“You have my whole heart. You always did.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“You have to carry the fire."
I don't know how to."
Yes, you do."
Is the fire real? The fire?"
Yes it is."
Where is it? I don't know where it is."
Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“If only my heart were stone.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“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, quote from The Road

“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Where men can't live gods fare no better.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“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, quote from The Road

“By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Road

“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, quote from The Road

“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, quote from The Road

“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, quote from The Road

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Popular quotes

“What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets

“Can you keep a secret, Sarah?" she asked. I nodded, remembering all our secrets shared together in her mother's house, and she said, her breath hot in my ear, "You cannot harvest the corn until you go into the corn."

I awoke with tears on my face, my hands clutching at the ribs around my heart. I had for more than forty years kept the past behind an impenetrable wall of my own devising. I thought that to move beyond this wall and revisit the past would scorch my reason and make me mad. But then, as I lay sweating in bed, restless and prickly, it came to me that to harvest a field of corn one does not wade into the dark middle of things and cut the stalks from the inside out. It is best done starting with the outside ears and working inward, stalk by stalk, keeping the light of the sun always at one's back so that its rays can illuminate each ear of corn, be it whole and sweet or black and blighted. And in this way does one make a meal that feeds a starving body back to wholeness. (183)”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“I’m not a hallucination,” J.C. snapped. “I have state-of-the-art stealthing equipment.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Legion

“It's really easy for us to miss each other in this big, big world... People I've met after a long time of looking; my important people.”
― Kyōichi Katayama, quote from Socrates In Love

“That was the strength of Ellysetta's weave. Bright, unyielding,indefatigable love. Love that did not know surrender. Love that did not understand limitations or even basic self-preservation. Love that would batter itself to death before giving in to defeat.”
― C.L. Wilson, quote from King of Sword and Sky

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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.