Cormac McCarthy

“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 you? Have you a heart? Da...”

“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.”

“Men do not turn from God so easily. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot e fled nor hid from. To imagine otherw...”

“You know we talked about where people go when they die. I just believe you go someplace and I seen her layin there and I thought maybe she wouldn't go to heaven because, you know, I thought...”

“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]”

“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.”

“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 corrupt it any more than...”

“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 what is true above what is...”

“You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced i...”

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

“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.”

“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”

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

“It was the nature of his profession that his experience with death should be greater than for most and he said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost...”

“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 will not...”

“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. Could you crush that beloved skull...”

“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...”

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.”

“When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: whe...”

“The dead boy in his arms hung with his head back and those partly opened eyes beheld nothing at all out of that passing landscape of street or wall or paling sky or the figures of the childr...”