Blood Meridian Family Quotes

How we cite our quotes:

Quote #7

"At fourteen he runs away. He will not see again the freezing kitchenhouse in the predawn dark" (1.4).

The kid decides to run away from home at fourteen, and based on the description of the freezing kitchen, it doesn't sound like he's running away from much.

Quote #8

"[Glanton] rode out alone on the desert and sat the horse and he and the horse and the dog looked out across the rolling scrubland and the barren peppercorn hills and the mountains and the flat brush country and running plain beyond where four hundred miles to the east were the wife and child that he would not see again" (13.14).

This passage almost makes it sound as if there's some part of Glanton that misses his wife and children. It's hard to tell whether this is just a detail the narrator's adding or something Glanton feels deeply sad about.

Quote #9

"He seemed not to be aware that his brother was dead inside the church" (16.12).

Later in the book, Glanton and his men come across two old brothers who've gone crazy from living in the desert. Glanton's men kill one of the brothers and leave the other one alive. These brothers have no one but each other in the whole world, so it's hard to imagine how cruel it is to kill one and leave the other alive.