"MAVEN You think his opinions are valuable because he’s worked all his life. Isnt that a pretty romantic notion?
BEN Yes. It’s also true. You cant separate wisdom from the common experience and the common experience is just what the worker has in great plenty.
MAVEN Then why arent more workers wise?
BEN I guess for the same reason that more college professors arent wise. Thinking’s rare among all classes. But a laborer who thinks, well, his thought seems more likely to be tempered with humanity. He’s more inclined to tolerance. He knows that what is valuable in life is life."

The Stonemason (1994) by Cormac McCarthy

"BEN (Watching Jeffrey) How old are you, Jeffrey?
JEFFREY Sixteen.
BEN How old do you think I am?
JEFFREY Man I dont know how old you are. All I know is you livin in the past. I’m livin in the past. History done swallowed you up cept you dont know it.
BEN If history swallows everybody up who do you think is running the world?
JEFFREY It look to you like somebody runnin it?
BEN When I was sixteen I looked forward to being eighteen. I looked forward to being twenty-one.
JEFFREY Yeah, well. Everybody over sixteen the same age to me. And I feel like I’m a hundred."

The Stonemason (1994) by Cormac McCarthy

"

Ben comes through the room and comes around the bed and sits slowly on the bedsprings and looks out, his hands clasped, his elbows on his knees. The light comes on at the podium.

BEN The big elm tree died. The old dog died. Things that you can touch go away forever. I dont know what that means. I dont know what it means that things exist and then exist no more. Trees. Dogs. People. Will that namelessness into which we vanish then taste of us? The world was before man was and it will again when he is gone. But it was not this world nor will it be, for where man lives is in this world only.

"

The Stonemason (1994) by Cormac McCarthy

"He did close his eyes. He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face. Everything that Wells has ever known or thought or loved drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mother’s face, his First Communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their knees before him. The body of a child dead in a roadside ravine in another country. He lay half headless on the bed with his arms outflung, most of his right hand missing."

No Country For Old Men (2005) by Cormac McCarthy

"His father smoked. He watched him.
You still seein that Barnett girl?
He shook his head.
She quit you or did you quit her?
I don’t know.
That means she quit you.
Yeah.
His father nodded. He smoked."

All The Pretty Horses (1992) by Cormac McCarthy

"The man nodded at the gray and malignant dawn. He moved his leveled hand slowly before him. You see that? he said.
Yessir.
He shook his head. I despise the wintertime. I never did see what the use in there even bein one.
He looked at John Grady.
You don’t talk much do you? he said.
Not a whole lot.
That’s a good trait to have."

All The Pretty Horses (1992) by Cormac McCarthy