Cormac McCarthy Quotes

People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things.

Just take me with you. Please. I cant. Please, Papa. I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.

It just bothered me that you might think I'm somethin special. I aint.

You either stick or you quit. And I wouldnt quit you I dont care what you done.

He said that whether a man's life was writ in a book someplace or whether it took its form day by day was one and the same for it had but one reality and that was the living of it.

Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.

I ain't got an original thought in my head. If it ain't got the scent of divinity to it, I ain't interested in it

I was afraid I was goin to die and then I was afraid I wasnt.

He rocked in the swells, floating like the first germ of life adrift on the earth's cooling seas, formless macule of plasm trapped in a vapor drop and all creation yet to come.

We're carrying the fire.

They came upon themselves in a mirror and he almost raised the pistol. It's us, Papa, the boy whispered. It's us.

Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.

For things at a common destination there is a common path. Not always easy to see. But there.

He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.

In dreams we stand in this great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed. There we go forth to meet what we shall meet.

Fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.

I guess if everybody went crazy together nobody would notice.

When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.

The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them.

For the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.

You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me.... You'll be all right.

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this., New York Times, April 19, 1992]

Carry the fire.

This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don't give up.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will.

If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay.

And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly.

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

The soul might be silent but the servant of the soul has always got a voice and it has got one for a reason.

...the space which [books] occupied was itself an expectation.

whoever approaches his goal dances

When you're a kid you have these notions about how things are going to be.... You get a little older and you pull back on some of that. I think you wind up just tryin to minimize the pain.

The names of entities that have the power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity. But my attitude toward them has not changed. Has not changed.

A man is always right to pursue the thing he loves.No matter even if it kills him?I think so. Yes. No matter what.

No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?No. It's never like what you expected.Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?

Even a nonbeliever might find it useful to model himself after God. Very useful, in fact.

They passed, leaving a trail of foxfire shuffled up out of the wet leaves like stars plowed in a ship's wake.

Summer was full on and the nights hot. It was like lying in warm syrup there in the dark under the viaduct, in the steady whine of gnats and nightbugs.

Summer was full on and the nights hot. It was like lying in warm syrup there in the dark under the viaduct, in the steady whine of gnats and nightbugs

Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

I dont know what happens to country.

Sorry. Don't need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth here. Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make you pine for your death.

Don't take in no strangers while I'm gone.She sighed deeply. They ain't a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.

Life is a memory, then it is nothing. All law is writ in a seed.

His mind was betraying him. Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep.

Each man is the bard of his own existence. This is how he is joined to the world.

He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised.

If you pursue this road that you've embarked upon, you will eventually come to moral decisions that will take you completely by surprise

Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.