Blood Meridian Quotes

McCarthy's prose in 'Blood Meridian' comes blazing from the Book of Revelation. ~ Clive Sinclair

This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god. ~ Cormac McCarthy

'Blood Meridian' was without question the novel that made me want to become a writer. ~ Rachel Kushner

The carrion birds sat about the topmost corners of the houses with their wings outstretched in attitudes of exhortation like dark little bishops. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Someone has to pay. Somewhere, somehow, someone has to pay. When a snake bites your children, you don't go and look for the snake that has blood on it's jaws, any old snake will do. Any old snake will do! ~ Malcolm X

Some people think we're made of flesh and blood and bones. Scientists say we're made of atoms. But I think we are made of stories. When we die, that's what people remember, the stories of our lives and the stories that we told. ~ Ruth Stotter

The back screen popped open before she could answer, and everyone who was still armed raised their weapons again, waiting breathlessly for the heavy footsteps to draw near. Chester came around the corner, a rag in his hands, wiping them clean. His shovel was held in the crook of his elbow, the shaft resting on his shoulder. Blood dripped from the sharpened tip of the blade. "Got me a couple," he said with a pleased grin. ~ Abigail Roux

Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands. ~ V.S. Carnes

The sunset over the bay that evening was a conflagration of blood-red and orange and deep, gold-edged purple. I remember: unforgettable. ~ Anne Rivers Siddons

And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. ~ Amy Tan

Only God can break through the variegated walls of skin to capture the one and only hue of the heart. One Blood. ~ Katelyne Parker

Success, in my view, is the willingness to strive for something you really want. The person not reaching the top is no less a success than the one who achieved it, if they both sweated blood, sweat and tears and overcame obstacles and fears. The failure to be perfect does not mean you're not a success. ~ Fran Tarkenton

He knew his vampire 'sisters' would drain the girls until they were nearly dead, then feed them some of their own blood. That's when the turning would start - as vampire and human blood mixed - and the parched agony of the Dark Kiss began. ~ Alan Kinross

Her eyes snapped open and she was instantly awake, alert, and ready. "Thank you, Ensign," she said.
Kember saluted unsteadily, her face drained of blood.
"Oh, and Ensign?" Josette said, before the girl left. "That request for you to throw yourself over the side and fall straight to Hell was not a formal order. You may feel free to disregard it. ~ Robyn Bennis

There were no stars, only the darkness and an arctic chill that had intensified since the first thin, blood-red stripes of sunrise shimmered on the ocean's horizon. ~ P.J. Parker

Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second. Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter and snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shepherds' star, eventide Venus; and Mars- quivering, red. But in days of blood and of peace the years fly like an arrow and the thick frost of a hoary white December, season of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, joy and glittering snow, overtook the young Turbins unawares. For the reigning head of the family, their adored mother, was no longer with them. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free. ~ Rumi

O sun, heart of the heavens whose blood of light
Infuses the vigor which transmutes to azure
The black ice strangler of great space obscure
I hate you, mask of gold, mist and fire, circular
Blind monster blinding all the prey around
You who veil the impure dazzling phantasm
To the loving vertigo of my avid gazes
The visions of the colorless abyss of the void
Reversed hollow truth-mask of the other world. ~ Roger Gilbert-Lecomte

Lava oozed up from the centre of the crater like blood from a wound. As the flaming lava touched the water it hissed and groaned. She feared she would be boiled alive. ~ Alison Cooklin

One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself.

He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind.

Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger's bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive.

That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole. ~ Peter Wessel Zapffe

They had to match blood type and meet all sorts of things I don't know about. ~ Shelley Fabares

I'm scared of madmen with knives, and perverts hiding in alleys. I'm scared of
people, because they're shit. But etheric entities don't frighten me. They don't have
hands of flesh and blood. They can't fire a gun. The only way they can hurt you is
through fear, your own mind. You must know that. ~ Stephen Jones

See what's inside a drop of water. The whole seed of the universe. Come, come. See what's inside a drop of blood. The composition of life. It's all there. Hate as well. We approach the mystery of life, but it's impossible to understand the mystery of hate. The kind of hate that causes people not only to kill, but to want to erase you from the census of births. I have to concentrate on that mystery. Read everything there is. It has to be in a drop of blood. It has to have its chemistry. ~ Manuel Rivas

I felt myself tremble, but I would not let him see it. Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it jus the same. ~ Madeline Miller

If we studied human beings which can include human genes, human blood samples, and human behavior, then you can leave the animals out of the labs and you can leave them off your plate. ~ Neal Barnard

On our wedding night," she said, "I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied. ~ Kiersten White

She was reading Francis Godwin's Man in the Moone--its man was borne into space in a carriage drawn by swans--when she heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel. Two boxes from Martin & Allestyre were set down on the drive. 'My modest closet plays,' she said. She nearly ran down the stairs--for the recovery of her wayward crates that spring and the preparation of her plays for publication had rekindled inside Margaret a flame she'd feared had gone out. ... But now, in turning the pages, she grew concerned and then incensed: 'reins' where she had written 'veins,' 'exterior' when she had clearly meant 'interior.' The sun went down. The room grew dim. ... 'Before the printer ruined it,' she cried, 'my book was good!'

'Could it be,' he asked, soaking his bread in {lamb's} blood, 'that you were yourself the cause of this misfortune? ~ Danielle Dutton

No one, she thought, had ever understood the nature of love…how love went beyond flutters in the heart, pining and yearning, or even beyond hatred and loathing. Love runs blood deep; permanent, inescapable. ~ Tabitha Vohn

Which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks. Holmes dashed into the crowd to protect the lady; but, just as he reached her, he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood running freely down his face. At his fall the guardsmen took to their heels in one direction and the loungers in the other, while a number of better dressed ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Now that I was sitting here holding my own flesh and blood with my heart about to explode from sheer joy, I felt nearer to knowing what it meant to be loved by God. The thought occupied my mind all summer - at every diaper change and every feeding, with every coo and smile and cry.

So this is what it's like to really love someone else, to have the sum total of everything you are and love, living and breathing outside of you?

It was my first, real taste of heaven, of communion with God, and in a way, its own baptism of sorts. ~ Edie Wadsworth

After a moment, his father looked up from the list and surveyed her. "Well done, Champion. Well done indeed."
Then Celaena and the King of Adarlan smiled at each other, and it was the most terrifying thing Dorian had ever seen.
"Tell my exchequer to give you double last month's payment," the king said. Dorian felt his gorge rise- not just for the severed head and her blood- stiffened clothing, but also for the fact that he could not, for the life of him, find the girl had loved anywhere in her face. And from Chaol's expression, he knew his friend felt the same.
Celaena bowed dramatically to the king, flourishing a hand before her. Then, with a smile devoid of any warmth, she stared down Chaol before stalking from the room, her dark cape sweeping behind her.
Silence. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Mud and rain and wretchedness and blood. Why should jolly soldier-boys complain? God made these before the roofless Flood - Mud and rain. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

There are but a few blood purifiers and these are all in the body. We know them as the liver, kidneys, lungs, colon, and a few glands. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

Klemperer's insight that Nazi speech dealt in superlatives. Hence, Hitler was the "smartest" leader of the "bravest" people of the "purest" blood, and Germany was the "greatest country" and "most glorious" of nations in the most "heroic" of wars and struggles against the "worst" of enemies in the "most dangerous" of times. ~ Dean G. Stroud

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story. ~ Andrew Vachss

Nihilism is the rejection of the principles of civilisation as such ... I said civilisation, and not: culture. For I have noticed that many nihilists are great lovers of culture, as distinguished from, and opposed to, civilisation. Besides, the term culture leaves it undetermined what the thing is which is to be cultivated (blood and soil or the mind), whereas the term civilisation designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian. ~ Leo Strauss