Authors — Quotes

Cormac McCarthy Quotes: 31

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
No Country For Old Men
You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.
The Road
Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.
The Road
People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there.
The Road
Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.You forget some things, dont you?Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
The Road
There is no God and we are his prophets.
The Road
You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.
No Country For Old Men
Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
You have my whole heart. You always did.
The Road
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
The Road
He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
All the Pretty Horses
You keep runnin that mouth and I'm goin to take you back there and screw you.
No Country For Old Men
I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.
Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.
The Road
Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.
The Crossing
Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.
The Road
I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.
No Country For Old Men
Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.
No Country For Old Men
I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt.
No Country For Old Men
Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing...
The Crossing
You are either born a writer or you are not.
Carry the fire.
The Road
Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.
The Road
I don't know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful, it will make little difference whether she lives at all.
All the Pretty Horses
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.[Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]
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.
The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic.
Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered, Oh God.
The Road
He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.
Cities of the Plain
Men do not turn from God so easily. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot e fled nor hid from. To imagine otherwise is to imagine the unspeakable. It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of him.
The Crossing