“The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night.”

—  Cormac McCarthy, book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with …" by Cormac McCarthy?
Cormac McCarthy photo
Cormac McCarthy270
American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter 1933

Related quotes

Annie Dillard photo

“The world which lay under darkness and stillness following the closing of the lid was not the world we know. The event was over. Its devastation lay around about us. The clamoring mind and heart stilled, almost indifferent, certainly disembodied, frail, and exhausted. The hills were hushed, obliterated. Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

" Total Eclipse https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/", Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)

Paulo Coelho photo

“Lie down on the ground and feel the planet's heart beating.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Pablo Neruda photo

“And I, infinitesima­l being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Federico García Lorca photo

“The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Source: Selected Poems

Philip Pullman photo

“The lizard dragged the priest’s body back to her nest, and her children feasted very well. As for the rifle, it lay in the grass where Father Gomez had laid it down, quietly turning to rust.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 36 : The Broken Arrow

“At night, when he lay down to sleep, he felt that his brain was resonating with the heartbeat of the planet.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Genesis I: 'The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, let there be light, and there was light.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

1940 - 1950

“She turned her face up to the strange stars and wondered in what direction her course lay. The sky looked blankly down upon her with its myriad meaningless eyes.”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

Black God's Kiss (1934); p. 23
Short fiction, Jirel of Joiry (1969)

Anna Akhmatova photo

“Thinking of the sun makes
my heart beat faster — too fast!
What darkness!
From this night winter begins.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Variant translations:
Memory of sun fades in my heart
What is this? Darkness? Maybe! —
During the night comes
winter.
"Memory of the Sun" (alternate translation by Paula Goodman)
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)

Related topics