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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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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His among the clouded faces seemed unperturbed. He looked over the Americans, their gear. In truth, they did not look like men who might have whiskey they hadn't drunk.
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And she waited again at the front door with it open, poised between the maw of the dead and loveless house and the outer dark like a frail thief.
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Don't flang him off the bluff, boys. Tain't christian.
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Where is yesterday? … And where is the fiddler and where is the dance?
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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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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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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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… 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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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.