Quotes from book
Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West is a 1985 epic Western novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House.

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“… and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“The arc of circling bodies is determined by the length of their tether, said the judge. Moons, coins, men. His hands moved as if he were pulling something from one fist in a series of elongations. Watch the coin, Davey, he said.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness and death.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men’ s journeys.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IX

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“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

Cormac McCarthy photo

“…words were said that could not be put right again…”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“You can’t be all Mexican. It’s like being all mongrel.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“For the Earth is a globe in a void the truth there's no up nor down to it.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter X

Cormac McCarthy photo

“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“Jackson, pistols drawn, lurched into the street vowing to shoot the ass off Jesus Christ, the longlegged white son of a bitch.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“La gente dice que el coyote es un brujo. Muchas veces el brujo es un coyote.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)