Cormac McCarthy quotes

Cormac McCarthy was an influential American novelist and playwright renowned for his distinctive prose and exploration of the darkest aspects of humanity. His acclaimed novels include "The Road," "No Country for Old Men," and "Blood Meridian." He became a defining voice in contemporary literature, earning numerous awards and inspiring generations of writers. Here are 274 of his quotes:

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. (Cormac McCarthy)
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. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away. View quote
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. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
We think we are the victims of time. In reality, the way of the world isn't fixed anywhere. How could that be possible? We are our own journey. And therefore we are time as well. We are the same. Fugitive. Inscrutable. Ruthless. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
You give up the world line by line. Stoically. And then one day you realize that your courage is farcical. It doesn't mean anything. You've become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one. (Cormac McCarthy)
The road has its own reasons and no two travelers will have the same understanding of those reasons. If indeed they come to an understanding of them at all. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? View quote
Cormac McCarthy
White: I long for Darkness. I pray for death, real death. And if I thought that in death I would meet the people I knew in life, I don't know what I would do. That would be the ultimate horror, the ultimate nightmare. If I thought I was gonna meet my mother again an' start all of that over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to... that would be the final nightmare. Goddamn Kafka on wheels. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
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. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. 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)
The point is there ain't no point. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Where men can't live gods fare no better. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
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. View quote
Cormac McCarthy