Cormac McCarthy Quotes

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

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.

At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned

Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.

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.

You keep runnin that mouth and I'm goin to take you back there and screw you.

When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.

Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?

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.

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.