Cormac McCarthy Quotes

But I didn't know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.

Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.

There was nothin to set a man's mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.

When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

For even if you should have stood your ground, he said, yet what ground was it?

He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him.

The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less.

Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?

Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold.

Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland.

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?

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.

Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less.

Every man's death is standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love the man who stands for us.

The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.

Hell ain't half full.

The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.

Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

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

They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.

The cooler days have brought a wistful mood upon him. The smell of coalsmoke in the air at night. Old times, dead years. For him such memories are bitter ones.

Last words are only words.

The world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them.

The voice of the Almighty speaks most profoundly in such things as lives in silence themselves.

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?

I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.

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.

The passing of armies and the passing of sands in the desert are one.

Where in this pukehole can a man get a drink? he said

I've always been interested in the Southwest. There isn't a place in the world you can go where they don't know about cowboys and Indians and the myth of the West.

To have a child when you're older, it wrenches you up out of your nap and makes you look at things, you know, afresh. It forces the world on you. And I think it's a good thing.

When God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

I guess you ought to be careful about cussin the dead. I would say at the least there probably ain't no luck in it.

War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

In the nights sometimes now he'd wake in the back and freezing waste out of softly colored worlds of human love, the songs of birds, the sun.

... a man leaves much when he leaves his own country.

The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire.

Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

Each the others world entire.

He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes, he is.

If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.

If you dont respect me what must you think of yourself?

I got here the same way the coin did.

You say you can't? Then don't do it. That's all.