Cormac McCarthy Quotes

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.

I can't take it back. I can't take anything back. So I don't regret it.

We know that we can't undo our whole lives.

There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.

Once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?

There is no point in apportioning blame. What is done, is done.

I don't live that life anymore, it's as simple as that.

There's nothing half so real in life as the things you've done... inexorably, unalterably done.

There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.

I'm an accumulation of every single thing I've done, good and bad.

I feel like I've started a new chapter in my life, and I need to leave the past behind.

I wanted to get away from my past and everything connected with it.

I cannot take back one word or action; the past does not change for anyone.

I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you.

I know, but no matter what I choose I have to live with it. Forever. I have to be able to go forward and not look back anymore. Can you understand that?

What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again.

If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself, I would find a way.

There is no rewind button for life.

It is impossible to erase my choices.

I walked away from acting for eight years and tried to make the choice that I should have made when I was 21. But, it doesn't make any difference. Nothing changed. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The past is one evil less and one memory more.

You can’t move ahead until you bury the past.

You are not your past.

We don't have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.