# Quote — Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

> In the night as he slept Boyd came to him and squatted by the deep embers of the fire as he'd done times by the hundreds and smiled his soft smile that was not quite cynical and he took off his hat and held it before him and looked down into it. In the dream he knew that Boyd was dead and that the subject of his being so must be approached with a certain caution for that which was circumspect in life must be doubly so in death and he'd no way to know what word or gesture might subtract him back again into that nothingness out of which he'd come. When finally he did ask him what it was like to be dead Boyd only smiled and looked away and would not answer. They spoke of other things and he tried not to wake from the dream but the ghost dimmed and faded and he woke and lay looking up at the stars through the bramblework of the treelimbs and he tried to think of what that place could be where Boyd was but Boyd was dead and wasted in his bones wrapped in the soogan upriver in the trees and he turned his face to the ground and wept.

- Author: [Cormac McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [The Crossing](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy#The_Crossing_(1994)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/in-the-night

## More from this book

> If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/if-people-knew.md)

> Billy asked him if such men as had stole his eyes were only products of the war but the blind man said that since war itself was their very doing that could hardly be the case.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/billy-asked-him.md)

> He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/he-said-that.md)