The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

by Cormac McCarthy

So how bad is the world? How bad. The world’s truth constitutes a vision so terrifying as to beggar the prophecies of the bleakest seer who ever walked it. Once you accept that then the idea that all of this will one day be ground to powder and blown into the void becomes not a prophecy but a promise.

I’ve always grudgingly admired the way in which you carried bereavement to such high station. The elevation of grief to a status transcending that which it sorrows. No, Squire. Hear me out. It’s the idea of loss. It subsumes the class of all possible lost things. It’s our primal fear, and you get to assign to it what you will. It doesnt invade your life. It was always there.

All reality is loss and all loss is eternal. There is no other kind. And that reality into which we inquire must first contain ourselves.

The daughters of men sit in half darkened closets inscribing messages upon their arms with razorblades and sleep is no part of their life.

If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be? It would be this: The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.