Top 500 Cormac McCarthy Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Life is a memory, and then it is nothing.”

— Cormac McCarthy

52. “You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”

— Cormac McCarthy

53. “Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard.”

— Cormac McCarthy

54. “The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less.”

— Cormac McCarthy

55. “The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it.”

— Cormac McCarthy

56. “Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That’s right. Others come in to govern for them.”

— Cormac McCarthy

57. “Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.”

— Cormac McCarthy

58. “It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.”

— Cormac McCarthy

59. “The trouble with a liar is he can’t remember what he said.”

— Cormac McCarthy

60. “I got here the same way the coin did.”

— Cormac McCarthy

61. “Teaching writing is a hustle.”

— Cormac McCarthy

62. “They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I’ll hug his neck.”

— Cormac McCarthy

63. “It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.”

— Cormac McCarthy

64. “Nadie sabe para quien trabaja.”

— Cormac McCarthy

65. “Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you’re happy again, then you’ll have given up. Do you understand? And you can’t give up, I won’t let you.”

— Cormac McCarthy

66. “They were watching, out there past men’s knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.”

— Cormac McCarthy

67. “Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

— Cormac McCarthy

68. “See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire.”

— Cormac McCarthy

69. “This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it.”

— Cormac McCarthy

Featured in: Country Quotes

70. “If a man’s at odds to know his own mind it’s because he hasn’t got aught but his mind to know it with.”

— Cormac McCarthy

71. “He kicked holes in the sand for the boy’s hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it. All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.”

— Cormac McCarthy

72. “You have to carry the fire.”

— Cormac McCarthy

73. “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.”

— Cormac McCarthy

74. “He didn’t say a lot so I tend to remember what he did say. And I don’t remember that he had a lot of patience with havin to say things twice so I learned to listen the first time.”

— Cormac McCarthy

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

75. “It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”

— Cormac McCarthy

76. “If you think about some of the things that are being talked about by thoughtful, intelligent scientists, you realize that in 100 years the human race won’t even be recognizable.”

— Cormac McCarthy

77. “I guess if everybody went crazy together nobody would notice.”

— Cormac McCarthy

78. “Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I’d made before it.”

— Cormac McCarthy

79. “The hardest lesson in the world: Maybe it’s just that when things are gone they’re gone. They aint comin back.”

— Cormac McCarthy

80. “Even if what you’re working on doesn’t go anywhere, it will help you with the next thing you’re doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot.”

— Cormac McCarthy

81. “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

82. “The point is there ain’t no point.”

— Cormac McCarthy

83. “Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.”

— Cormac McCarthy

Featured in: Real Quotes

84. “He said that 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.”

— Cormac McCarthy

85. “Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.”

— Cormac McCarthy

86. “People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don’t deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things.”

— Cormac McCarthy

87. “What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?”

— Cormac McCarthy

88. “He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes, he is.”

— Cormac McCarthy

89. “She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.”

— Cormac McCarthy

90. “You go back home and everything you wished was different is still the same and everything you wished was the same is different.”

— Cormac McCarthy

91. “How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said. I don’t guess you would know it. You’d just be it. Nobody would know it. It wouldn’t make any difference. When you die it’s the same as if everybody else died too.”

— Cormac McCarthy

92. “When the shooting starts would you rather be armed or legal?”

— Cormac McCarthy

93. “When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.”

— Cormac McCarthy

94. “The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.”

— Cormac McCarthy

95. “When God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”

— Cormac McCarthy

96. “No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No. It’s never like what you expected. Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?”

— Cormac McCarthy

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

97. “Word gets around when the circus comes to town, don’t it?”

— Cormac McCarthy

98. “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 it was his doing.”

— Cormac McCarthy

99. “What business is it of yours where I’m from, friendo?”

— Cormac McCarthy

100. “We think we are the victims of time. In reality, the way of the world isn’t fixed anywhere. How could that be possible? We are our own journey. And therefore we are time as well. We are the same. Fugitive. Inscrutable. Ruthless.”

— Cormac McCarthy