Cormac McCarthy quotes - page 10

Anything can be an instrument, Chigurh said. Small things. Things you wouldnt even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People dont pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It's just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it's just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it? (Cormac McCarthy)
She came from the shower wrapped in a towel and she sat on the bed and took his hand and looked down at him. I cannot do what you ask, she said. I love you. But I cannot. He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
What good do you think it does to waller all over a horse thataway? said Rawlins. I dont know, said John Grady. I aint a horse. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
What man would not be a dancer if he could, said the judge. It's a great thing, the dance. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
He can neither read nor write and in him already there broods a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Drink up, he said. Drink up. This night thy soul may be required of thee. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
People see what they want to see. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
The judge smiled. It is not necessary, he said, that the principals here be in possession of the facts concerning their case, for their acts will ultimately accommodate history with or without their understanding. But it is consistent with notions of right principle that these facts-to the extent that they can be readily made to do so-should find a repository in the witness of some third party. Sergeant Aguilar is just such a party and any slight to his office is but a secondary consideration when compared to divergences in that larger protocol enacted by the formal agenda of an absolute destiny. Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
...death seemed the most prevalent feature of the landscape. (Cormac McCarthy)
I can man anything that eats. Get me a piece of jerky. -John Joel Glanton. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
I cant back up and start over. But I dont see the point in slobberin over it. And I cant see where it would make me feel better to be able to point a finger at somebody else. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
It had already occurred to him that he would probably never be safe again in his life and he wondered if that was something that you got used to. And if you did? View quote
Cormac McCarthy
This is a terrible place to die in. Where's a good one? View quote
Cormac McCarthy
How many is there, John?. Did you learn to whisper in a sawmill? View quote
Cormac McCarthy
The hour that followed was a long hour. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
...he shook his head at the wonderful invention of folly in its guises and forms. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
There aint but one truth, said John Grady. The truth is what happened. It aint what come out of somebody's mouth. View quote
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)
You think about all that stuff that can happen to you, he said. There aint no end to it. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
[W]hen you encounter certain things in the world, the evidence for certain things, you realize that you have come upon somethin that you may very well not be equal to and I think that this is one of them things. When you've said that it's real and not just in your head I'm not all that sure what it is you have said. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
I'll tell you somethin, Sheriff. Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it's all that more likely it'll get took away. Sixteen was, for that matter. I think about that. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. View quote
Cormac McCarthy