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In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

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
Might
Never
Weep
Groups
Control
History
Tell

More quotes by Cormac McCarthy

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What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise. (All the Pretty Horses)
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The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.
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They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.
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The passing of armies and the passing of sands in the desert are one.
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I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.
Cormac McCarthy
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If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.
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I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.
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The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.
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Fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.
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Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.
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What is it? Nothing. I had a bad dream. What did you dream about? Nothing. Are you okay? No. He put his arms around him and held him. It's okay, he said. I was crying. But you didnt wake up. I'm sorry. I was just so tired. I meant in the dream.
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Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.
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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.
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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
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The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn't know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren't.
Cormac McCarthy
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He didn't say a lot so I tend to remember what he did say. And I don't remember that he had a lot of patience with havin to say things twice so I learned to listen the first time.
Cormac McCarthy
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Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.
Cormac McCarthy
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It is personal. That's what an education does. It makes the world personal.
Cormac McCarthy
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My daddy used to tell me not to chew on somethin that was eatin you.
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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