I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant...

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.[Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]

He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet...

Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.

If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we...

What is it?Nothing. I had a bad dream.What did you dream about?Nothing.Are you okay?No.He put his arms around him and held him. It’s okay, he said.I was crying. But you didnt wake up.I’m sorry. I...

They filed out in descending order by altitudes, the father first, out through the sunlit doors in a sextet of calico isotropes and into the street, the elder smiling, along through the crowds and down...

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

Rage is really only for the good days. The truth is there’s little of that left. the truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content....

And after and for a long time to come he’d have reason to evoke the recollection of [the strangers’] smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to...

You have my whole heart. You always did.

I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn’t. I don’t blame him. If I was him I’d have the same opinion about...

Here beyond men’s judgments all covenants were brittle.

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.

Soll ich dir eine Geschichte erzählen? Nein.Warum nicht? Der Junge sah ihn an und wandte den Blick ab.Warum nicht? Diese Geschichten sind nicht wahr. Das müssen sie auch nicht sein. Es sind Geschichten. Ja. Aber...

If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

I don’t know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value...

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

I didn’t mean I’d seen everything, John Grady said.I know you didn’t.I just meant I’d seen some things I’d as soon not of.I know it. There’s hard lessons in this world. What’s the hardest? I...

I aint sure we’ve seen these people before. Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they’d have to build a annex on to hell.

The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that...

Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

Harrogate saw them going along Blount Avenue Sunday morning. They wore outfits all cut from the same bolt of cloth and in the church pew standing six across they looked like a strip of gaudy...

He came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank. He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath...

The things I believed in dont exist any more. It’s foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see...

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.

People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.

Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle...

The freedom of birds is an insult to me.

There is but one world and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at...

It howled execration upon the dim camarine world of its nativity wail on wail while he lay there gibbering with palsied jawhasps, his hands putting back the night like some witless Paraclete beleaguered with all...

He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of...

After a while he said: It’s not about knowin where you are. It’s about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody’s. You dont start over. That’s...

There is no God and we are his prophets.

It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he’d made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise...

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.

Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and pu...

Each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins.

And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the...

All other trades are contained in that of war.Is that why war endures?No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.That’s your...

His feet went banging down some stairs. He closed his eyes. They went through cinders and dirt, his heels gathering small windrows of trash. A dim world receded above his upturned toes, shapes of skewed...

Do you think I lie to you?No.But you think I might lie to you about dying.Yes.Okay. I might. But we’re not dying.Okay.

Maybe it’s not logical. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ve been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it’s odd...

Just take me with you. Please.I cant.Please, Papa.I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.You forget some things, dont you?Yes. You forget what you want to remember and...

He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men’s claims to know God’s mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.