Cormac McCarthy on Justice

"Your brother is still young enough to believe that the past still exists, he said. That the injustices within it await his remedy."

"What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness and death."

"It's like a lot of things, said the smith. Do the least part of it wrong and ye'd just as well to do it all wrong."

"Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable."

"What man would not be a dancer if he could, said the judge. It’s a great thing, the dance."

"All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it."

"....A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They’re always more trouble than what they’re worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done."

"Anybody can be a pendejo, said John Grady. That just means asshole."

"Nothin wounded goes uphill, he said. It just dont happen."

"I don't aim to quit while I'm ahead. I just aim to quit."

"hen you encounter certain things in the world, the evidence for certain things, you realize that you have come upon somethin that you may very well not be equal to and I think that this is one of them things. When you've said that it's real and not just in your head I'm not all that sure what it is you have said."

"The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one."

"Yes, he said. I busted him and he busted me. That's fair, ain't it?The boy was still silent, calmly incredulous.No, Sylder went on, I ain't forgettin about jail. You think because he arrested me that throws it off again I reckon? I don't. It's his job. It's what he gets paid for. To arrest people that break the law. And I didn't jest break the law, I made a livin at it."

"He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?"