Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and screenwriter. McCarthy has written ten novels, two plays, two screenplays, and two short-stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. Hope, our collection of Cormac McCarthy Quotes will give you a different perspective to look at life.
If you break little promises, you’ll break big ones.
– Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy Quotes
1. “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” – Cormac McCarthy
2. “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” – Cormac McCarthy
3. “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.” – Cormac McCarthy
4. “Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.” – Cormac McCarthy
5. “If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.” – Cormac McCarthy
6. “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
7. “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” – Cormac McCarthy
8. “There is no God and we are his prophets.” – Cormac McCarthy
9. “War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” – Cormac McCarthy
10. “There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.” – Cormac McCarthy
11. “Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.” – Cormac McCarthy
12. “Each man is the bard of his own existence.” – Cormac McCarthy
13. “Any time you’re throwin dirt you’re losin ground.” – Cormac McCarthy
14. “What joins men together … is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.” – Cormac McCarthy
15. “War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.” – Cormac McCarthy
16. “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.” – Cormac McCarthy
17. “I believe that whatever you do in your life it will get back to you. If you live long enough it will.” – Cormac McCarthy
18. “Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That’s right. Others come in to govern for them.” – Cormac McCarthy
19. “The voice of the Almighty speaks most profoundly in such things as lives in silence themselves.” – Cormac McCarthy
20. “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
21. “The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.” – Cormac McCarthy
22. “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up.” – Cormac McCarthy
23. “When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.” – Cormac McCarthy
24. “Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever…” – Cormac McCarthy
25. “Scared money can’t win and a worried man can’t love.” – Cormac McCarthy
26. “One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.” – Cormac McCarthy
27. “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
28. “I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.” – Cormac McCarthy
29. “The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.” – Cormac McCarthy
30. “Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.” – Cormac McCarthy
31. “It may be that if you don’t have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything.” – Cormac McCarthy
32. “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
33. “Find work you like, and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both.” – Cormac McCarthy
34. “Ever step you take is forever.” – Cormac McCarthy
35. “But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse.” – Cormac McCarthy
36. “People don’t pay attention. And then one day there’s an accounting. And after that, nothing is the same.” – Cormac McCarthy
37. “Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupations of men engaged in rash undertakings.” – Cormac McCarthy
38. “If it doesn’t concern life and death, it’s not interesting.” – Cormac McCarthy
39. “The ugly fact is books are made out of books… the novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” – Cormac McCarthy
40. “If you’re good at something it’s very hard not to do it.” – Cormac McCarthy
