Cormac McCarthy Quotes

294 Sourced Quotes

Billy asked him if such men as had stole his eyes were only products of the war but the blind man said that since war itself was their very doing that could hardly be the case.

Cormac McCarthy
Getting hurt changed me, he said. Changed my perspective. I've moved on, in a way. Some things have fallen into place that were not there before. I thought they were, but they weren't. The best way I can put it is that I've sort of caught up with myself. That's not a bad thing. It was overdue.

Cormac McCarthy
He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

Cormac McCarthy
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out.

Cormac McCarthy
They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.

Cormac McCarthy
The arc of circling bodies is determined by the length of their tether, said the judge. Moons, coins, men. His hands moved as if he were pulling something from one fist in a series of elongations. Watch the coin, Davey, he said.

Cormac McCarthy
War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god. — The judge

Cormac McCarthy
If you could breathe a breath so strong you could blow out the wolf. Like you blow out the copo. Like you blow out the fire from the candela. The wolf is made the way the world is made. You cannot touch the world. You cannot hold it in your hand for it is made of breath only.

Cormac McCarthy
If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.

Cormac McCarthy
I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

Cormac McCarthy
We wouldn't ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course not. Even if we were starving? We're starving now. You said we weren't. I said we weren't dying. I didn't say we weren't starving. But we wouldn't. No. We wouldn't. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. Okay.

Cormac McCarthy
Remember her hair in the morning before it was pinned, black, rampant, savage with loveliness. As if she slept in perpetual storm.

Cormac McCarthy
He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

Cormac McCarthy
What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.

Cormac McCarthy
The things I believed in don't exist any more. It's foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now.

Cormac McCarthy
The prospect of outsized profits leads people to exaggerate their own capabilities. In their minds. They pretend to themselves that they are in control of events where perhaps they are not. And it is always one's stance upon uncertain ground that invites the attentions of one's enemies. Or discourages it.

Cormac McCarthy
Books lie, he said. God don't lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things. The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.

Cormac McCarthy
But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse

Cormac McCarthy
If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.

Cormac McCarthy
Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.

Cormac McCarthy
It is personal. That's what an education does. It makes the world personal.

Cormac McCarthy
Probably I don't believe in a lot of things that I used to believe in but that doesn't mean I don't believe in anything.

Cormac McCarthy
Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.

Cormac McCarthy
Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now upreared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineheards but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.

Cormac McCarthy
Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.

Cormac McCarthy
Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it.

Cormac McCarthy
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But the trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

Cormac McCarthy
I can't back up and start over. But I don't see the point in slobbering over it. And I can't see where it would make me feel better to be able to point a finger at somebody else.

Cormac McCarthy
He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.

Cormac McCarthy
She smiled. I think it's just the snow. I think it makes people stop and think. Bell nodded. I hope it comes a blizzard then.

Cormac McCarthy