top of page
.png){kind=small}
"I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Writing quotes
"I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show."
"Scotland consistently produces world-class writers."
"A writer writesregardless...even though...notwithstanding...despite...at any rate...anyhow...nevertheless...in the face of...undeterred by...heedless of...and because.The true writer simply continues to write."
"What I've learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true."
"If you want to be a good writer, internalize the good writers; absorb them; integrate with their souls; embrace their minds; mingle with their life stories; in short, merge with them, lose yourself in them!"
"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."
"Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain."
Explore more quotes by Cormac McCarthy
"A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. 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."
"There were in the camp a number of Mexican slaves and these ran forth calling out in spanish and were brained or shot and one of the Delawares emerged from the smoke with a naked infant dangling in each hand and squatted at a ring of midden stones and swung them by the heels each in turn and bashed their heads against the stones so that the brains burst forth through the fontanel in a bloody spew and humans on fire came shrieking forth like berserkers and the riders hacked them down with their enormous knives and a young woman ran up and embraced the bloodied forefeet of Glanton's warhorse."
"People always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there."
"What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream."
"In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like heathen candles."
"All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.Yessir.But there aint 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."
"I believe that we are arks of the covenant and our true nature is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing."
bottom of page