Quotes by Cormac McCarthy

A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound.

This ferry was taken over by the Yumas and operated for them by a man named Callaghan, but within days it was burned and Callaghans headless body floated anonymously downriver, a vulture standing between the shoulderblades in clerical black, silent rider to the sea.

Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

I didnt mean Id seen everything, John Grady said.I know you didnt.I just meant Id seen some things Id as soon not of.I know it. Theres hard lessons in this world. Whats the hardest? I dont know. Maybe its just that when things are gone theyre gone. They aint comin back. Yessir.

I dont know what happens to country.

Now the son whose fathers existance in this world is historical and speculative even before the son has entered it in a bad way. All his life he carries before him the idol of a perfection to which he can never attain. The father dead has euchered his son of his patrimony. For it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is heir, more than his goods.He will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life. He will not see him struggling in follies of his own devising. No. The world which he inherits bears him false witness. He is broken before a frozen god and he will never find his way.

The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.

Sorry. Dont need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth here. Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make you pine for your death.

Dont take in no strangers while Im gone.She sighed deeply. They aint a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.

Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion.

Life is a memory, then it is nothing. All law is writ in a seed.

His mind was betraying him. Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep.

A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember.

Each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins.

They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.

Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place.

Each man is the bard of his own existence. This is how he is joined to the world.

I dont believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamour and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place. Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain and nothing more. And if that pain were actually collective instead of simply reiterative then the sheer weight of it would drag the world from the walls of the universe and send it crashing and burning through whatever night it might yet be capable of engendering until it was not even ash. And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good god, man. Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness. Theres a church I might enter. Yours prepares one only for more life. For dreams and illusions and lies. If you could banish the fear of death from mens hearts they wouldnt live a day. Who would want this nightmare if not for fear of the next? The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and every thing that you have chosen to care for. Theres the true brotherhood. The true fellowship. And everyone is a member for life. You tell me that my brother is my salvation? My salvation? Well then damn him. Damn him in every shape and form and guise. Do I see myself in him? Yes, I do. And what I see sickens me. Do you understand me? Can you understand me?

Your hearts desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.