Top 500 Cormac McCarthy Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”

— Cormac McCarthy

52. “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.”

— Cormac McCarthy

53. “Life is a memory, and then it is nothing.”

— Cormac McCarthy

54. “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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

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. “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

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

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy

62. “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

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

— Cormac McCarthy

64. “His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy

66. “Nadie sabe para quien trabaja.”

— Cormac McCarthy

67. “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

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

— Cormac McCarthy

69. “If you break little promises, you’ll break big ones.”

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy

71. “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

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

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy

75. “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

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

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy

78. “My daddy used to tell me not to chew on something that was eatin you.”

— Cormac McCarthy

79. “Hell ain’t half full.”

— Cormac McCarthy

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

83. “You have to carry the fire.”

— Cormac McCarthy

84. “It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.”

— Cormac McCarthy

85. “Any time you’re throwin dirt you’re losin ground.”

— Cormac McCarthy

86. “If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it’s drinking.”

— Cormac McCarthy

87. “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

88. “Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable.”

— Cormac McCarthy

89. “Dying ain’t in people’s plans, is it?”

— Cormac McCarthy

90. “For the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.”

— Cormac McCarthy

91. “He may be dead; or he may be teaching English.”

— Cormac McCarthy

92. “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

93. “If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what.”

— Cormac McCarthy

94. “By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker.”

— Cormac McCarthy

95. “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

96. “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

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

— Cormac McCarthy

98. “What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.”

— Cormac McCarthy

99. “Qual es lo peor: Que soy pobre o que soy americano?”

— Cormac McCarthy

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

— Cormac McCarthy