Quotes from Cormac McCarthy

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.

And of course it shouldnt come as a surprise to find that people in rubber rooms have a worldview at odds with that of the people who put them there.

The old man remembered it now with dim regret, and remembered such nights when the air was warm as a breath and the moon no dead thing.

At the foot of the steps he picked up what appeared to be a wig and saw that it was fashioned whole from a dried human scalp.

Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. 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.

Even if you knew what to do you wouldnt know what to do. You wouldnt know if you wanted to do it or not.

I only know that every act which has no heart will be found out in the end.

There ain't but one life worth livin and I was born to it.

That the deep foundation of the world be considered where it has its being in the sorrow of her creatures.

His own tracks came from the cave bloodred with cavemud and paled across the slope as if the snow had cauterized his feet until he left dry white prints in the snow.

He thought perhaps if he dreamt of him enough he'd go away forever and be dead among his kind

She raised her eyes and looked at him. He'd never seen despair before. He thought he had, but he had not.

The room smelled of old cigarsmoke. He leaned and turned off the little brass lamp and sat in the dark. Through the front window he could see the starlit prairie falling away to the north. The black crosses of the old telegraph poles yoked across the constellations passing east to west.

Yes mam. I do. The people of Terrell County hired me to look after em. That's my job. I get paid to be the first one hurt. Killed, for that matter. I'd better care.

Your brother is young enough to believe that the past still exists, he said. That the injustices within it await his remedy. Perhaps you believe this also?

I dont suppose you have any glasses. They're in the kitchen. Western started to get up. I dont think you want to go back there. He sat back down again. It aint a pretty sight. Sink's so full of dishes you got to go outside to take a leak.

The lights of Knoxville quaked in a faint penumbra to the west as must the ruins of many an older city seen by herders in the hills, by barbaric tribesmen shuffling along the roads.

Those whom life does not cure death will.

What if a whole goddamned building was to just up and sink? What about two or three buildings? What about a whole block? Harrogate was waving his bottle about. Goddamn, he said. What if the whole fuckin city was to cave in? That's the spirit, said Suttree.

Ten presente que las cosas que te metes en la cabeza están ahí para siempre. Quizá deberías pensar en eso. —Algunas cosas las olvidas, ¿no? —Sí. Olvidas lo que quieres recordar y recuerdas lo que quieres olvidar.

Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing.

You catch the snowflake but when you look in your hand you dont have it no more. Maybe you see this dechado. But before you can see it it is gone. If you want to see it you have to see it on its own ground. If you catch it you lose it. And where it goes there is no coming back from. Not even God can bring it back.

Tus ideas sobre empezar de nuevo. O las de otro. No se empieza de nuevo. Ese es el quid. Cada paso que das es para siempre. No puedes eliminarlo. ¿Entiendes lo que te digo?

the lesson of a life can never be its own. Only the witness has power to take its measure. It is lived for the other only.