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When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

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
Make
Ceremonies
Ceremony
Breathe
Air
Upon
Left
Nothing

More quotes by Cormac McCarthy

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The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.
Cormac McCarthy
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Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland.
Cormac McCarthy
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The man watched him. Real life is pretty bad? What do you think? Well, I think we're still here. A lot of bad things have happened but we're still here. Yeah. You don't think that's so great. It's okay.
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If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.
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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.
Cormac McCarthy
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Do you have any notion of how goddamned crazy you are?
Cormac McCarthy
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It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.
Cormac McCarthy
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The world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them.
Cormac McCarthy
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In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself.
Cormac McCarthy
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I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said. I know you didn't. I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of. I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir.
Cormac McCarthy
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Men believe death's elections to be a thing inscrutable yet every act invites the act which follows and to the extent that men put one foot before the other they are accomplices in their own deaths as in all such facts of destiny.
Cormac McCarthy
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Acts have their being in the witness. Without him who can speak of it? In the end one could even say that the act is nothing, the witness all.
Cormac McCarthy
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You are either born a writer or you are not.
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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There was a sharp crack from somewhere on the mountain. Then another. It's just a tree falling, he said. It's okay. The boy was looking at the dead roadside trees. It's okay, the man said. All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.
Cormac McCarthy
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I was afraid I was goin to die and then I was afraid I wasnt.
Cormac McCarthy
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The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Cormac McCarthy
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People think they know what they want but they generally don't. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways.
Cormac McCarthy
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I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.
Cormac McCarthy
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It starts when you begin to overlook good manners. Any time you quit hearing Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight.
Cormac McCarthy