Cormac McCarthy quotes - page 2

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 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.

Cormac McCarthy

I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.

Cormac McCarthy

All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.

Cormac McCarthy

I tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you're just too close to it.

Cormac McCarthy

The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn't know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren't.

Cormac McCarthy

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

Cormac McCarthy

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise. (All the Pretty Horses)

Cormac McCarthy

He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.

Cormac McCarthy

My daddy used to tell me not to chew on somethin that was eatin you.

Cormac McCarthy

What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream.

Cormac McCarthy

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?

Cormac McCarthy

Word gets around when the circus comes to town, don't it?

Cormac McCarthy

There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.

Cormac McCarthy

Black: Belief aint like unbelief. If you a believer then you got to come finally to a well of belief itself and then you dont have to look no further. There aint no further. But the unbeliever has got a problem. He has set out to unravel the world, but everthing he can point to that aint true leaves two new things layin there. If God walked the earth when he got done makin it then when you get up in the mornin' you get to put your feet on a real floor and you dont have to worry about where it come from. But if he didnt then you got to come up with a whole other description of what you even mean by real. And you got to judge everything by that same light. If light is is. Includin yourself. One question fits all.

Cormac McCarthy

He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he is sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their blood in history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him?

Cormac McCarthy

And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare.

Cormac McCarthy

The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it.

Cormac McCarthy

Given charge Ballard would have made things more orderly in the woods and in men's souls.

Cormac McCarthy

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Cormac McCarthy

Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.

Cormac McCarthy

Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.

Cormac McCarthy

When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.

Cormac McCarthy