Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear in them but only that wildness of heart that springs from such longing and they cry out to stay his presence for they know at once that while godless men may live well enough in their exile those to whom He has spoken can contemplate no life without Him but only darkness and despair. Trees and stones are no part of it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
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, Cities of the Plain
Fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them. Where there is no penalty there can be no prize.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
In dreams we stand in this great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed. There we go forth to meet what we shall meet.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
There was nothin to set a man's mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
I guess if everybody went crazy together nobody would notice.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
Best way to live in California is to be from somewhere else. Probably the best way is to be from Mars.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
Our enemies ... seem always with us. The greater our hatred the more persistent the memory of them so that a truly terrible enemy becomes deathless. So that the man who has done you great injury or injustice makes himself a guest in your house forever. Perhaps only forgiveness can dislodge him.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. Maybe he did.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
For the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can't be governed at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
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, Cities of the Plain
One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
In ... dreams there is a language that is older than the spoken word at all. The idiom is another specie and with it there can be no lie or no dissemblance of the truth.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
There's a difference between quittin and knowin when you're beat.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Cities of the Plain
For things at a common destination there is a common path. Not always easy to see. But there.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
People think they know what they want but they generally don't. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, No Country for Old Men
To see God everywhere is to see Him nowhere.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Road
Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Road
At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Child of God
I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Hourses
I remember in grammar school the teacher asked if anyone had any hobbies. I was the only one with any hobbies, and I had every hobby there was. There was no hobby I didn't have, name anything, no matter how esoteric, I had found it and dabbled in it. I could have given everyone a hobby and still had 40 or 50 to take home.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, "McCarthy's Venomous Fiction", New York Times Magazine, April 19, 1992
How would you know if you were the last man on Earth?... I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Road
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