Cormac McCarthy

Novelist, Screenwriter

Cormac McCarthy is an acclaimed American novelist known for his stark prose and exploration of existential themes in works like 'The Road.'

Born
July 20, 1933
Quotes
357
Rank
#418

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Cormac McCarthy quotes (page 17 of 18)

357 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Cormac McCarthy Novelist, Screenwriter
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"Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth."

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"and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead."

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"The man watched him. Real life is pretty bad? What do you think? Well, I think we're still here. A lot of bad things have happened but we're still here. Yeah. You don't think that's so great. It's okay."

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"Do you have any notion of how goddamned crazy you are?"

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"I got here the same way the coin did."

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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."

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"Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?"

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

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"Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty water sliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun."

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"I dont know what I ever done, she said. I truly dont. Chigurh nodded. Probably you do, he said. There's a reason for everything. She shook her head. How many times I've said them very words. I wont again."

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"For things at a common destination there is a common path. Not always easy to see. But there."

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"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."

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"Well, I guess in all honesty I would have to say that I never knew nor did I ever hear of anybody that money didnt change."

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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."

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"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."

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"They came upon themselves in a mirror and he almost raised the pistol. It's us, Papa, the boy whispered. It's us."

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"He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it."

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"This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god."

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"She smiled. I think it's just the snow. I think it makes people stop and think. Bell nodded. I hope it comes a blizzard then."

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"They lay listening. 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. What if it doesn't fire? It has to fire. What if it doesn't fire? Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly."

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