Cormac McCarthy Quotes

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.

Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

Robin turned and looked straight into her. "What's life for?" "I don't know." "I don't either. But I don't think it's about winning.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.

Why does anything ever happen? Some things happen and some don't.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

I just tell you and though I dont sound like it I've got plenty of sense, there aint any answer, there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that's the answer.

I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.

There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

Without zest, what is life? Just waiting for death?

I also don't believe that "everything happens for a reason," which is in a similar category of world-views.

She was a woman attempting to make some sense of, and get some satisfaction from, a life that seemed to have no more logic than a roulette wheel.

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

Fate is unpenetrated causes.

Drink! For you know not whence you came nor why.

You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

What if the worst is true? What if there's no God, and you only go around once, and that's it? Don't you want to be a part of the experience? You know, what the hell? It's not all a drag, and I'm thinking to myself: Geez! I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after-who knows? Maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know that maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have.

You'll never know why you exist, but you'll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.

Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don't know the meaning of life

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.