Cormac McCarthy Quotes

Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know - it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.

I didn't think I was going to die. I knew some did. I knew there were some rumors.

In war, everything changes. You are very selective of what you do because everything you do can be the last thing you do in your life.

While there's life, there's fear.

There's just no real job security when you're shooting a show about an apocalypse, and anybody could die at any time.

Thrillers are like life, more like life than you are.

I thought they'd get one of us, but Jack, after all he's been through, never worried about it I thought it would be me.

There's nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating.

In this situation I was constantly exposed to danger and death.

Pray that we can come out alive.

Once you know how completely and suddenly the earth can open up at your feet and the worst can happen, it also, paradoxically, leaves you more afraid of everything else.

In wartime you never know what is going to happen, you never know whether you will still be around tomorrow, and that is a great leveller.

No one was safe in the Viking age. You could die from any cause at any time. It's a brutal time and a brutal environment.

Oliver: Fear is the natural state of anything that dies.

True. The one certainty about riding, Braygan, is that - at some time - you will fall off. It is a fact. Another fact you might like to consider, in your life of perpetual terror, is that you will die. We are all going to die, some of us young, some of us old, some of us in our sleep, some of us screaming in agony. We cannot stop it, we can only delay it.

Fall mountains, just don't fall on me.

Moths like me die by the thousands every minute. Her work goes on all the same. Glory unto Mother!

He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die. He's going to die anyway. He's so scared, Papa. The man squatted and looked at him. I'm scared, he said. Do you understand? I'm scared. The boy didn't answer. He just sat there with his head down, sobbing. You're not the one who has to worry about everything. The boy said something but he couldn't understand him. What? He said. He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?

I think I'll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what's going to happen. I can still die after that - it won't be too late. Probably.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.

He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.

What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, "It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our stalks, when autumn comes?" Foolish fear! Summer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death is upon the leaves; and the gentlest breeze that blows takes them softly and silently from the bough, and they float slowly down, like fiery sparks, upon the moss.