Cormac McCarthy Quotes
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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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Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That's right. Others come in to govern for them
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When 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.
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Pale manchild were there last agonies? Were you in terror, did you know? Could you feel the claw that claimed you? And who is this fool kneeling over your bones, choked with bitterness? And 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.
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I don't aim to quit while I'm ahead. I just aim to quit.
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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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Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everything on this earth, he said.
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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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Billy asked him if such men as had stole his eyes were only products of the war but the blind man said that since war itself was their very doing that could hardly be the case.
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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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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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Where is yesterday? … And where is the fiddler and where is the dance?
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People see what they want to see.
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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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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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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 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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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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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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You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
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He said we were full of shit. But in a nice way.
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What joins men together, he said, is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.
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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.