A big lemon colored cat watched him from the top of a wood stove. He turned his head to see it better, and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound.

— Cormac McCarthy

A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember.

— Cormac McCarthy

A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.

— Cormac McCarthy

Ah, they said. Que Buena. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve, and it had power to hear men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted.

— Cormac McCarthy

All my life, he said, I have been witness to people shown up where they are supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didn't have a reason for it. Yessir. But there ain't but one reason. Yessir. You know what it is? No sir. It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be.

— Cormac McCarthy

All other trades are contained in that of war. Is that why war endures? No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. That's your notion. The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows to that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

— Cormac McCarthy

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

— Cormac McCarthy

A man is always right to pursue the thing he loves. No matter even if it kills him? I think so. Yes. No matter what.

— Cormac McCarthy

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or will. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart, but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

— Cormac McCarthy

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or will. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart, but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone. He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly, and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

— Cormac McCarthy