Cormac McCarthy Quotes

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.

Truth resists simplicity.

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

I didn't see anything.

No one can know the full story of something as vast and complicated and as full of deceit as the War in Vietnam…The historians will not know it …

I'm not a believer in 'what you don't know won't hurt you,' unless it's innocent.

What is simple is false and what is not is useless.

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.

Mystery and innocence are not akin.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.

Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.

In the essence of truth lies deceit.

Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored.

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true .

As the bonfires of knowledge grow brighter, the more the darkness is revealed to our startled eyes.

In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.

All this contains much that is obviously true, and much that is relevant; unfortunately, what is obviously true is not relevant, and what is relevant is not obviously true.

A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows

A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

Good nonsense is good sense in disguise.

Sometimes there are no answers.

Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.