A malign star kept him.
--Cormac McCarthy, Child Of God
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, Suttree
No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. 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, The Road
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
--Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men
Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
--Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.
--Cormac McCarthy, Cities Of The Plain