Quotes from Cormac McCarthy

He rocked in the swells, floating like the first germ of life adrift on the earth's cooling seas, formless macule of plasm trapped in a vapor drop and all creation yet to come.

He didn't say a lot so I tend to remember what he did say. And I don't remember that he had a lot of patience with havin to say things twice so I learned to listen the first time.

Any time you're throwin dirt you're losin ground.

All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.

It starts when you begin to overlook good manners. Any time you quit hearing Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight.

Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

Life is a memory, then it is nothing. All law is writ in a seed.

The names of entities that have the power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity. But my attitude toward them has not changed. Has not changed.

It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.

What joins men together ... is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.

... a man leaves much when he leaves his own country.

When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.

People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.

This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it.

In the nights sometimes now he'd wake in the back and freezing waste out of softly colored worlds of human love, the songs of birds, the sun.

Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.

People think they know what they want but they generally don't. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways.

What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

A man is always right to pursue the thing he loves.No matter even if it kills him?I think so. Yes. No matter what.

I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.

If there's one thing on this planet you don't look like it's a bunch of good luck walkin around.

Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.

The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.