"We come here from Georgia. Our family did. Horse and wagon. I pretty much know that for a fact. I know they's a lots of things in a family history that just plain ain't so. Any family. The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth can't compete. But I don't believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that's what it is. It's the thing you're talking about. I've heard it compared to the rock--maybe in the bible--and I wouldn't disagree with that. But it'll be here even when the rock is gone. I'm sure they's people would disagree with that. Quite a few, in fact. But I never could find out what any of them did believe."

-----Cormac McCarthy, "No Country for Old Men" (Sherriff Bell monologue)


"In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped and shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. 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, "The Road"