Find quotes from this novel, with commentary from Shmoop. Pick a theme below to begin.
Violence Quotes
People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate smoking in their clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides. Others would come to help them. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and d...
Love Quotes
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. (1.1)
Mortality Quotes
He [The Boy] was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. His face in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian. Can I ask you...
Spirituality Quotes
When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could se...
Isolation Quotes
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...
Good vs. Evil Quotes
He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had w...
Memory and the Past Quotes
They passed through the city at noon of the day following. He kept the pistol to hand on the folded tarp on top of the cart. He kept the boy close to his side. The city was mostly burned. No sign o...
Strength and Skill Quotes
A quarter mile down the road he stopped and looked back. We're not thinking, he said. We have to go back. He pushed the cart off the road and tilted it over where it could not be seen and they left...
Versions of Reality Quotes
In dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy. Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress of gauze and her dark hair was carried up in combs of...
Compassion and Forgiveness Quotes
The boy kept looking back. Papa? he whispered. What is wrong with the man? [The Man:] He's been struck by lightning. [The Boy:] Cant we help him? Papa? [The Man:] No. We cant help him. [The Boy:]...