Quotes from Cormac McCarthy

He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.

Beauty makes promises that beauty cant keep.

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work.

In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself.

Every man's death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale?

I think sometimes people would rather have a bad answer about things than no answer at all.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

Maybe it's not logical. I don't know. I don't care. I've been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it's odd but that doesnt mean it's not so. Someone has to be here.

This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war.

For this will to deceive that is in thing luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies

The ugly fact is books are made out of books, the novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.

those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness

Every man's death is standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love the man who stands for us.

Men do not turn from God so easily. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot e fled nor hid from. To imagine otherwise is to imagine the unspeakable. It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of him.

We used to talk about death, she said. We don't anymore. Why is that? I don't know. It's because it's here. There's nothing left to talk about. I wouldn't leave you. I don't care. It's meaningless. You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. O yes he is. Please don't do this. I'm sorry. I can't do it alone.

The hardest lesson in the world: Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.

It's just that sometimes I think I would have found my life pretty funny if I hadnt had to live it.

And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.

Whatever voice spoke him was no demon but some old shed self that came yet from time to time in the name of sanity. a hand to gentle him back from the rim of his disastrous wrath.

Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings.

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in that mazeis itself an enslavement for it voids every alternate and binds one ever more tightly in to the constraints that make a life.

Mr Suttree in what year did your greatuncle Jeffrey pass away? It was in 1884. Did he die by natural causes? No sir. And what were the circumstances surrounding his death? He was taking part in a public function when the platform gave way. Our information is that he was hanged for a homicide.

History is a collection of paper. A few fading recollections. After a while what is not written never happened.