# Quote — Cormac McCarthy, Child of God

> He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he is sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their blood in history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him? (p.147)

- Author: [Cormac McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [Child of God](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/child-of-god.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy#Child_of_God_(1973)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/child-of-god/he-could-not

## More from this book

> He dreamt that night that he rode through the woods on a low ridge. Below him he could see deer in a meadow where the sun fell on the grass. The grass was still wet and the deer stood in it to their elbows. He could feel the spine of the mule rolling under him and he gripped the mule's barrel with his legs. Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed, he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins slender like bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day ever was and he was riding to his death. (p.162)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/child-of-god/he-dreamt-that.md)

> It's like a lot of things, said the smith. Do the least part of it wrong and ye'd just as well to do it all wrong. (p.71)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/child-of-god/its-like-a-lot.md)

> Whatever voice spoke to him was no demon but some old shed self that came yet from time to time in the name of sanity, a hand to gentle him back from the rim of his disastrous wrath. (p.149)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/child-of-god/whatever-voice-spoke.md)