{
  "type": "quote",
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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/maybe-he-understood",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/maybe-he-understood.json",
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  "text": "Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’d lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child has known this better than he.",
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  "author": {
    "name": "Cormac McCarthy",
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  "book": {
    "title": "The Road",
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      "name": "childhood",
      "slug": "childhood",
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    {
      "name": "loss",
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  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:42",
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      "slug": "you-have-to-carry",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/you-have-to-carry",
      "text": "You have to carry the fire.\n\nI don't know how to.\n\nYes, you do.\n\nIs the fire real? The fire?\n\nYes it is.\n\nWhere is it? I don't know where it is.\n\nYes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.",
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:43"
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      "slug": "once-there-were",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/once-there-were",
      "text": "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.",
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      "slug": "do-you-remember",
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      "text": "Do you remember that little boy, Papa?\n\nYes. I remember him.\n\nDo you think that he’s all right that little boy?\n\nOh yes. I think he’s all right.\n\nDo you think he was lost?\n\nNo. I don't think he was lost.\n\nI’m scared that he was lost.\n\nI think he’s all right.\n\nBut who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?\n\nGoodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.",
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