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in dreams it is often the case that the greatest extravagances seem bereft of their power to astonish and the most improbable chimeras seem commonplace.

Cormac McCarthy

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Cormac McCarthy
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: July 20
Novelist
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Providence
Rhode Island
Charles McCarthy
Power
Case
Extravagances
Dreams
Chimeras
Seem
Astonish
Cases
Chimera
Greatest
Bereft
Often
Extravagance
Dream
Improbable
Seems
Commonplace

More quotes by Cormac McCarthy

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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 to the day.
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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.
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In every trade save war men of talent and vigor prosper. In war they die.
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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
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There is no later. This is later.
Cormac McCarthy
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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
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She smiled. I think it's just the snow. I think it makes people stop and think. Bell nodded. I hope it comes a blizzard then.
Cormac McCarthy
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The cooler days have brought a wistful mood upon him. The smell of coalsmoke in the air at night. Old times, dead years. For him such memories are bitter ones.
Cormac McCarthy
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When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
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I guess if everybody went crazy together nobody would notice.
Cormac McCarthy
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The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them.
Cormac McCarthy
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This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.
Cormac McCarthy
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Your god must once have stood at a dawn of infinite possibilities, and this is what he's made of it. You tell me that I want God's love? I don't. Perhaps I want forgiveness, but there's no-one to ask it of. And there's no going back, there's no setting things right, there's only the hope of nothingness.
Cormac McCarthy
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Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That's right. Others come in to govern for them.
Cormac McCarthy
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The passing of armies and the passing of sands in the desert are one.
Cormac McCarthy
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Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.
Cormac McCarthy
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Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
Cormac McCarthy
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The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.
Cormac McCarthy
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Just take me with you. Please. I cant. Please, Papa. I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.
Cormac McCarthy
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You give up the world line by line. Stoically. And then one day you realize that your courage is farcical. It doesn't mean anything. You've become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left.
Cormac McCarthy