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Cormac McCarthy Quotes | Quotes said by Cormac McCarthy

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #1

    A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #2

    A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #3

    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.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #4

    A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #5

    A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.
    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 Quote #6

    Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had power to hear men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #7

    All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.
    Yessir.
    But there aint but one reason.
    Yessir.
    You know what it is?
    No sir.
    It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #8

    All other trades are contained in that of war.

    Is that why war endures?

    No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.

    That's your notion.

    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 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 Quote #9

    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.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #10

    And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of [the strangers'] smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had the power to heal men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #11

    And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #12

    Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #13

    As pessoas estavam sempre a preparar-se para o futuro. Eu não acreditava nisso. O futuro não se estava a preparar para elas. O futuro nem sabia que elas existiam.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #14

    At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #15

    Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #16

    Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #17

    But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry (of life) will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge of the world that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #18

    But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way o show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet is all we have.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #19

    By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #20

    By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #21

    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.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #22

    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. What if it doesn't fire? It has to fire. Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock?

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #23

    Carry the fire.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #24

    Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.

    [Interview, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009]

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #25

    Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #26

    Deployed upon that plain they moved in a constant elision, ordained agents of the actual dividing out the world which they encountered and leaving what had been and what would never be alike extinguished on the ground behind them.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #27

    Do you think I lie to you?
    No.
    But you think I might lie to you about dying.
    Yes.
    Okay. I might. But we're not dying.
    Okay.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #28

    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.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #29

    Dope.
    They sell that shit to schoolkids.
    It's worse than that.
    How's that?
    Schoolkids buy it.

  • Cormac McCarthy Quote #30

    E se eu te dissesse que ele é um deus?
    O velho abanou a cabeça. Já não acredito em nada disso. Deixei de acreditar há anos. Onde os homens não conseguem viver, os deuses não têm melhor sorte. Vais ver. É melhor estar sozinho.

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