Cormac McCarthy Quotes

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men

Variant: Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: The Sunset Limited

Source: The Road

Source: Child of God

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Road

Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Crossing

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IX, Judge Holden

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

All the Pretty Horses (1992)
Context: He lay listening to the horse crop the grass at his stakerope and he listened to the wind in the emptiness and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere and die in the darkness at the edge of the world and as he lay there the agony in his heart was like a stake. He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.

All the Pretty Horses (1992)
Context: He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he'd presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who's layin there?

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

The judge
Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: The Road

Source: All the Pretty Horses (1992)
Context: He thought he'd be an object of some curiosity but the people he saw only nodded gravely to him and passed on. He carried the bucket back into the store and went down the street to where there was a small cafe and he entered and sat at one of the three small wooden tables. The floor of the cafe was packed mud newly swept and he was the only customer. He stood the rifle against the wall and ordered huevos revueltos and a cup of chocolate and he sat and waited for it to come and then he ate very slowly. The food was rich to his taste and the chocolate was made with canela and he drank it and ordered another and folded a tortilla and ate and watched the horses standing in the square across the street and watched the girls. They'd hung the gazebo with crepe and it looked like a festooned brush-pile. The proprietor showed him great courtesy and brought him fresh tortillas hot from the comal and told him that there was to be a wedding and that it would be a pity if it rained. He inquired where he might be from and showed surprise he'd come so far. He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Source: The Crossing

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men

Source: The Road

Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men

Source: The Road

Source: All The Pretty Horses: All The Pretty Horses

Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter V
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Source: No Country for Old Men

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: I aint got all that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things that you might think would make a man happier. I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.

Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)

Variant: You have my whole heart. You always did.
Source: The Road

Source: No Country for Old Men

The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html by John Jurgensen <!--accessed: November 17, 2009-->
Variant: I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
Context: I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

Source: The Road

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter III
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Source: Suttree