WIST Quotations

McCarthy, Cormac -- “Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy,” interview with John Jurgensen, The Wall Street Journal (20 Nov 2009)

Dave — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 16:47:06 +0000

I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
“Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy,” interview with John Jurgensen, The Wall Street Journal (20 Nov 2009)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Dave — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 17:59:17 +0000

When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Dave — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 18:23:34 +0000

He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Dave — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 21:22:15 +0000

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they?

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- All the Pretty Horses, ch. 4 (1992)

Dave — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 15:21:52 +0000

It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood, and this is a thing that even God — who knows all that can be known — seems powerless to change.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
All the Pretty Horses, ch. 4 (1992)
(Source)

See Santayana.

McCarthy, Cormac -- Blood Meridian, ch. 5 (1985)

Dave — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 17:05:57 +0000

When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
Blood Meridian, ch. 5 (1985)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- No Country for Old Men (2005)

Dave — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 22:51:46 +0000

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 what it’s about. Every step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country for Old Men (2005)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- No Country for Old Men (2005)

Dave — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 21:41:32 +0000

You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont 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. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who’s layin there?

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country for Old Men (2005)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- No Country For Old Men (2005)

Dave — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 23:37:45 +0000

You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There ain’t no such thing as a bargain promise.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country For Old Men (2005)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- No Country for Old Men (2005)

Dave — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 21:09:14 +0000

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country for Old Men (2005)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- No Country for Old Men (2007)

Dave — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 20:35:22 +0000

My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country for Old Men (2007)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- No Country for Old Men, ch. 4 (2005)

Dave — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 01:50:35 +0000

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. I don’t recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country for Old Men, ch. 4 (2005)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- Outer Dark (1968)

Dave — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 17:00:40 +0000

Don’t flang him off the bluff, boys. Tain’t christian.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
Outer Dark (1968)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- Outer Dark, ch. 17 (1968)

Dave — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 17:21:22 +0000

I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
Outer Dark, ch. 17 (1968)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- Suttree (1979)

Dave — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 18:00:07 +0000

How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
Suttree (1979)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- The Crossing (2010)

Dave — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 17:01:14 +0000

He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
The Crossing (2010)
(Source)

McCarthy, Cormac -- The Crossing [Quijada] (1994)

Dave — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 20:59:53 +0000

If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
The Crossing [Quijada] (1994)
(Source)

Often mis-cited to All the Pretty Horses (1992), the first part of the Border Trilogy (this is the second).

McCarthy, Cormac -- In Richard B. Woodward, “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction,” New York Times (19 Apr 1992)

Dave — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 21:14:54 +0000

There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
In Richard B. Woodward, “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction,” New York Times (19 Apr 1992)
(Source)