The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, the mind itself being but a fact among others.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Blood Meridian
I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2009
A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman.... They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
The truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
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 and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will whither in bitterness.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
I've always been interested in the Southwest. There isn't a place in the world you can go where they don't know about cowboys and Indians and the myth of the West.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, New York Times, Apr. 19, 1992
Usually, you don't know where a book comes from ... it's just there, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Oprah Winfrey interview, Jun. 1, 2008
In every trade save war men of talent and vigor prosper. In war they die.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
Men believe death's elections to be a thing inscrutable yet every act invites the act which follows and to the extent that men put one foot before the other they are accomplices in their own deaths as in all such facts of destiny.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
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.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
Word gets around when the circus comes to town.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
The indulgent 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you're going to write something like "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Moby-Dick," go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don't care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009
To have a child when you're older, it wrenches you up out of your nap and makes you look at things, you know, afresh. It forces the world on you. And I think it's a good thing.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Oprah Winfrey interview, Jun. 1, 2008
Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
The wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, New York Times, Apr. 19, 1992
Beware gentle knight. There is no greater monster than reason.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
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, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009
It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
The world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
At some point the mind must grammaticize facts and convert them to narratives. The facts of the world do not for the most part come in narrative form. We have to do that.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, "The Kekulé Problem: Where did language come from?", Nautilus, April 20, 2017
Problems in general are often well posed in terms of language and language remains a handy tool for explaining them. But the actual process of thinking--in any discipline--is largely an unconscious affair. Language can be used to sum up some point at which one has arrived--a sort of milepost--so as to gain a fresh starting point. But if you believe that you actually use language in the solving of problems I wish that you would write to me and tell me how you go about it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, "The Kekulé Problem: Where did language come from?", Nautilus, April 20, 2017
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
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