Cormac McCarthy Quotes - Page 10

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She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.

Cormac McCarthy

Moving, Eye, Light

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.136, Pan Macmillan

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He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

Cormac McCarthy

Memories, Party, Reality

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Road film tie-in”, p.139, Pan Macmillan

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Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.

Cormac McCarthy

Community, Suffering, Hell

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.559, Pan Macmillan

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Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland.

Cormac McCarthy

Men, Migrants, Shells

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Road”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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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.

Cormac McCarthy

Pain, Soul, Might

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.263, Pan Macmillan

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If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what.

Cormac McCarthy

Quality, Hazards, Matter

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.223, Pan Macmillan

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Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

Cormac McCarthy

Memories, Past, Men

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.348, Pan Macmillan

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Where men can't live gods fare no better.

Cormac McCarthy

Men

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Hell ain't half full.

Cormac McCarthy

Half, Hell, Half Full

"Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West". Book by Cormac McCarthy, Chapter III, 1985.

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What is it? Nothing. I had a bad dream. What did you dream about? Nothing. Are you okay? No. He put his arms around him and held him. It's okay, he said. I was crying. But you didnt wake up. I'm sorry. I was just so tired. I meant in the dream.

Cormac McCarthy

Dream, Sorry, Tired

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The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less.

Cormac McCarthy

Stars, Lying, Fall

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.16, Pan Macmillan

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Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast endless net. 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 the maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life.

Cormac McCarthy

Destiny, Men, Choices

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy: Picador Classic”, p.863, Pan Macmillan

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See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.

Cormac McCarthy

Mother, Children, Passion

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.74, Pan Macmillan

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In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out.

Cormac McCarthy

Dream, Country, Lying

Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.244, Pan Macmillan

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Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of.

Cormac McCarthy

Dream, Men, Mind

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Cities of the Plain”, p.135, Pan Macmillan

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In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be 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 a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.

Cormac McCarthy

Believe, Blood, Knowing

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.227, Pan Macmillan

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Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.

Cormac McCarthy

Boys, Littles, Goodness

Cormac McCarthy (2007). “The Road”, p.236, Vintage

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The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the earth, the sun whitehot and the moon a pale replica, as if they were the ends of a common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past all reckoning.

Cormac McCarthy

Past, Moon, Blue

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.91, Pan Macmillan

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In the neuter austerity of that terrain all phenomena were bequeathed a strange equality and no one thing nor spider nor stone nor blade of grass could put forth claim to precedence. The very clarity of these articles belied their familiarity, for the eye predicates the whole on some feature or part and here was nothing more luminous than another and nothing more enshadowed and in the optical democracy of such landscapes all preference is made whimsical and a man and a rock become endowed with unguessed kinship.

Cormac McCarthy

Eye, Men, Rocks

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West”, p.258, Vintage

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They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.

Cormac McCarthy

Death, Night, Hug

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.13, Pan Macmillan

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When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

Cormac McCarthy

Fire, Hair, Different

Cormac McCarthy (2007). “The Road”, p.185, Vintage

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If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.

Cormac McCarthy

Life, People, Stories

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Crossing: Book 2 of The Border Trilogy”, p.387, Vintage

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He spoke of his campaigns in the deserts of Mexico and he told them of horses killed under him and he said that the souls of horses mirror the souls of men more closely than men suppose and that horses also love war. Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to holo

Cormac McCarthy

Horse, War, Heart

Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.114, Pan Macmillan

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The cooler days have brought a wistful mood upon him. The smell of coalsmoke in the air at night. Old times, dead years. For him such memories are bitter ones.

Cormac McCarthy

Memories, Night, Air

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.175, Pan Macmillan

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We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course not. Even if we were starving? We're starving now. You said we werent. I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving. But we wouldnt. No. We wouldnt. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. Okay.

Cormac McCarthy

Fire, Guy, Dying

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Road film tie-in”, p.136, Pan Macmillan

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Cormac McCarthy

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Born: July 20, 1933
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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