Quotes from Cormac McCarthy

Host and sorrow to waste as one without distinction until the wretched coagulant is shoveled into the ground at last and the rain primes the stones for fresh tragedies.

There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead.

I gave up apologizing for myself a long time ago. What should I say? That I'm sorry to be that which I am? I'd very little to do with it.

His mind was betraying him. Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep.

If you break little promises you'll break big ones. That's what you said.

whoever approaches his goal dances

He looked at the boy. You wont shoot, he said. That's what you think. You aint got but two shells. Maybe just one. And they'll hear the shot. Yes they will. But you wont. How do you figure that? Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore. They'll just be soup.

By midmorning eight of the horses stood tied and the other eight were wilder than deer, scattering along the fence and bunching and running in a rising sea of dust as the day warmed, coming to reckon slowly with the remorselessness of this rendering of their fluid and collective selves into that condition of separate and helpless paralysis which seemed to be among them like a creeping plague.

In the grueling light that passed for day...

I think maybe they are watching, he said. They are watching for a thing that even death cannot undo and if they do not see it they will turn away from us and they will not come back.

He said that like every man who comes to the end of something there was nothing to be done but to begin again. No puedo recordar el mundo de luz, he said. Hace muchos años. Ese mundo es un mundo fragil. Ultimamente lo que vine a ver era mas durable. Mas verdadero.

Se quedó escuchando el goteo del agua en el bosque. Lecho rocoso, este. El frío y el silencio. Las cenizas del mundo difunto trajinadas de acá para allá por los crudos y transitorios vientos en el vacío. Llevadas, esparcidas y llevadas de nuevo. Todo desencajado de su apuntalamiento. Sin soporte en el viento cinéreo. Sostenido por una respiración, temblorosa y breve. Ojalá mi corazón fuese de piedra.

If I'm not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I'll talk to you. You'll see.

At our noblest we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.

Bears that dance, bears that don't.

In my experience people who say no matter what seldom know what what might turn out to be. They dont know how bad what might get. I'll see you.

Writing is very subconscious and the last thing I want to do is think about it.

They sell that shit to schoolkids. It's worse than that. How's that? Schoolkids buy it.

He rode out in the dark long before daylight and he rode the sun up and he rode it down again. In the oncoming years a terrible drought struck west Texas. He moved on. There was no work in that country anywhere. Pasture gates stood open and sand drifted in the roads and after a few years it was rare to see stock of any kind and he rode on. Days of the world. Years of the world. Till he was old.

White: Well you surprise me. And you've come to what conclusions? Black: I aint. I'm still thinkin. White: Yes. Well, I'm not. Black: Things can change. White: No they cant. Black: You could be wrong. White: I dont think so. Black: But that aint somethin you have a lot of in your life. White: What isnt? Black: Being wrong. White: I admit it when I'm wrong. Black: I dont think so. White: Well, you're entitled to your opinion.

Black: So how come they cant be your brothers in despair and selfdestruction? I thought misery loved company? White: I'm sure I don't know. Black: Well let me take a shot at it. White: Be my guest. Black: What I think is that you got better reasons then them. I mean, their reasons is just that they dont like it here, but yours says what they is not to like and why not to like it. You got more intelligent reasons. More elegant reasons.

Live by yourself and you bound to talk yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you're light in the head. But I reckon it's all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don't understand and cain't answer if he did.

We're like the Comanches was two hundred years ago. We don't know what's goin to show up here come daylight. We don't even know what color they'll be.

We dont move through the days, Squire. They move through us.