# Quote — Cormac McCarthy, The Road

> In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

- Author: [Cormac McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [The Road](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Road#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/in-those-first

## More from this book

> You have to carry the fire.
>
> I don't know how to.
>
> Yes, you do.
>
> Is the fire real? The fire?
>
> Yes it is.
>
> Where is it? I don't know where it is.
>
> Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/you-have-to-carry.md)

> Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/once-there-were.md)

> Do you remember that little boy, Papa?
>
> Yes. I remember him.
>
> Do you think that he’s all right that little boy?
>
> Oh yes. I think he’s all right.
>
> Do you think he was lost?
>
> No. I don't think he was lost.
>
> I’m scared that he was lost.
>
> I think he’s all right.
>
> But who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?
>
> Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/do-you-remember.md)