Cormac McCarthy Quotes

Your life is not predestined, as in Calvinist thought, where everything is written down in the book of life long before your birth and is inescapable. There are choices, accidents, hints and wrong paths, and the ego you, or whatever you call yourself, is a factor in all this. But there is still this other factor that keeps calling. At some moment, people turn, in despair or when they are unable to go any longer on a certain route, and this inner voice says, "Where have you been? I've been waiting for you to turn to me for a long time."

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

In the end, I want to be able to say, 'My life was what I made it.'

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me.

My most earnest prayer is that every man and every woman will get it into his or her heart that they are in very deed the architects of their lives.

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

Man must assume responsibility for the direction of his life and destiny.

Your life is a result of the choices you have made. If you don't like your life, start making better choices.

Niall: We're tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will.

There are a lot of memories we imagine. We play them over and over in our minds, trying to orchestrate our movements and words to perfection. Or maybe it's just that I've lived inside of my head more than any other person in the history of the world. Maybe none of us can really predict how we will act at any give moment. Maybe we're all at the mercy of circumstance in spite of our well-laid plans.

We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices.

There is no plan, no future laid out for any of us beyond what we make for ourselves.

Life is not a finished product, it is only what we make of it, and if we make nothing of it, someone else will, and we will be his slave.

Do you think I know what I'm doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it's writing, or the ball can guess where it's going next.

With the story of your life, you dont get to write the whole book, just your character.

Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.

You do not choose the life you will experience ahead of time. You may select the persons, places and events - the conditions and circumstances, the challenges, the opportunities and options - with which to create experiences. What you create with these is your business.

The search for a life-style involves a journey to the interior. This is not altogether a pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call “the trouble with you.” Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.

As I look back on my life, I see it as one long obstacle course with myself as the main obstacle.

I like to think that we’re not defined by what happens to us…because so many times they’re beyond our control. I like to think that we’re defined by our choices and our decisions.

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.

...remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.