Cormac McCarthy Quotes - Page 9

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It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists, yet I know what she does not. That there is nothing to lose.

Cormac McCarthy

Desire, May, Doe

Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.245, Pan Macmillan

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A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

Cormac McCarthy

Heart, Fate, Destiny

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Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.

Cormac McCarthy

Dream, Axes, Hands

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.942, Pan Macmillan

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He lay on his back in his blankets and looked our where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In the false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.

Cormac McCarthy

Stars, Sleep, Dark

Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.62, Pan Macmillan

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Things happen to you they happen. They dont ask first. They dont require your permission.

Cormac McCarthy

Firsts, Permission, Happens

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Maybe. Anyway, some men get what they want. No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real is no longer that world at all.

Cormac McCarthy

Real, Men, Dreamer

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

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There was someone there and they had been there. There was no one there. There was someone there and they had been there and they had not left but there was no one there.

Cormac McCarthy

Left

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.194, Pan Macmillan

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The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.

Cormac McCarthy

Hands, Order, Judging

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.209, Pan Macmillan

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I don't know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they're really good. And there's just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that's the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there's going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don't care whether it's art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don't think so.

Cormac McCarthy

Art, Drama, Mean

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But this man had set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasn't that nothin' would change. Which is what you might think, I suppose. He had to know better'n that. I've thought about it a good deal. . . And I have to say that the only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I don't have no intentions of carvin' a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think that's what I would like most of all.

Cormac McCarthy

Heart, Men, Thinking

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The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.

Cormac McCarthy

Eye, Dark, Sea

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Road”, p.83, Pan Macmillan

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Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen the horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance. - The judge

Cormac McCarthy

War, Heart, Men

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.349, Pan Macmillan

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Dying ain't in people's plans, is it?

Cormac McCarthy

Death, People, Dying

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The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it.

Cormac McCarthy

Lying, Sleep, Men

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.43, Pan Macmillan

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He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

Cormac McCarthy

Children, Spokes, Said

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Road”, p.3, Pan Macmillan

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

Cormac McCarthy

Truth, Lying

Cormac McCarthy (2007). “No Country for Old Men”, p.123, Vintage

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Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.

Cormac McCarthy

Events, Shapes, Patterns

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.219, Pan Macmillan

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Choose your enemies carefully 'cause they will define you Make them interesting 'cause in some ways they will mind you They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends Gonna last with you longer than your friend

Cormac McCarthy

Interesting, Mind, Enemy

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The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

Cormac McCarthy

Heart, Together, Would Be

Cormac McCarthy (2007). “The Road”, p.49, Vintage

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In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself.

Cormac McCarthy

Spring, Struggle, Winter

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Child of God”, p.138, Vintage

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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.

Cormac McCarthy

Firsts, Remember, First Time

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They sat on a bench and Sproule held his wounded arm to his chest and rocked back and forth and blinked in the sun. What do you want to do? said the kid. Get a drink of water. Other than that. I dont know. You want to try and head back? To Texas? I don't know where else. We'd never make it. Well you say. I aint got no say. He was coughing again. He held his chest with his good hand and sat as if he'd get his breath. What have you got, a cold? I got consumption. Consumption? He nodded. I come out here for my health.

Cormac McCarthy

Kids, Texas, Hands

Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West”, p.61, Vintage

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They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them.

Cormac McCarthy

Running, Light, Blood

Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

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If you dont respect me what must you think of yourself?

Cormac McCarthy

Thinking, Respect Me, Ifs

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For the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.

Cormac McCarthy

Two, Choices, Poverty

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.777, 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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