Cormac McCarthy Quotes
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It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood, and this is a thing that even God-who knows all that can be known-seems powerless to change.
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Where is yesterday? … And where is the fiddler and where is the dance?
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...he shook his head at the wonderful invention of folly in its guises and forms.
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This is a terrible place to die in.Where’s a good one?
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What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness and death.
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I didnt know you could steal your own life. And I didnt know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal.
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… and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be.
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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
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It's like a lot of things, said the smith. Do the least part of it wrong and ye'd just as well to do it all wrong. (p.71)
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The arc of circling bodies is determined by the length of their tether, said the judge. Moons, coins, men. His hands moved as if he were pulling something from one fist in a series of elongations. Watch the coin, Davey, he said.
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When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.
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Don't flang him off the bluff, boys. Tain't christian.
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Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world.
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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?
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People see what they want to see.
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Because he is a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgments. - The judge.
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He said we were full of shit. But in a nice way.
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You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
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My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man's mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.
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I never knowed there was such a place as this.I guess there’s probably every kind of place you can think of.