Cormac McCarthy book summaries

“You have to carry the fire.”

The father repeatedly tells the boy that they are the ones who carry the fire, a metaphor for maintaining goodness and hope in a ruined world.

“I am the one who has to die when it's time. You have to live.”

The father explains to the boy why he must go on without him, as the father's health fails.

“The world is not going to be saved by the good people. It's going to be saved by the bad people who are good.”

A line that reflects the novel's moral complexity, though it is often misquoted; the actual line is 'The world is not going to be saved by the good people. It's going to be saved by the bad people who are good.'

“Are you carrying the fire?”

The boy asks this of the man who finds him after his father's death, to determine if he is one of the good guys.

“In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

A descriptive passage from the novel that evokes the ancient, mysterious quality of the natural world, now lost.