Quotes about Experience
He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
— Cormac McCarthy
It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it? Yes. It does. There's a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah? I think so. I guess there are. The life you've lived, for one. Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.
— Cormac McCarthy
Words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.
— Cormac McCarthy
He said that whether a man's life was writ in a book someplace or whether it took its form day by day was one and the same for it had but one reality and that was the living of it.
— Cormac McCarthy
Acts have their being in the witness. Without him who can speak of it? In the end one could even say that the act is nothing, the witness all.
— Cormac McCarthy
No, Professor, it aint nothin like that. You dont have to be virtuous. You just has to be quiet. I cant speak for the Lord but the experience I've had leads me to believe that he'll speak to anybody that'll listen. You damn sure aint got to be virtuous.
— Cormac McCarthy
I think what is being pointed out is that human consciousness and reality are not the same thing.
— Cormac McCarthy
The world you live in is shored up by a collective of agreements. Is that something you think about? The hope is that the truth of the world somehow lies in the common experience of it. Of course the history of science and mathematics and even philosophy is a good bit at odds with this notion. Innovation and discovery by definition war against the common understanding. One should be wary.
— Cormac McCarthy
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will.
— Cormac McCarthy
I just meant I'd seen things I'd as soon not of. I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I don't know . Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.
— Cormac McCarthy
Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all. But regret is a prison.
— Cormac McCarthy
The lesson of a life can never be its own. Only the witness has power to take its measure. It is lived for the other only.
— Cormac McCarthy