Quotes about Perception
He had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an ill-formed notion of their appearance.
— Cormac McCarthy
Do you think horses understand what people say? I aint sure most people do.
— Cormac McCarthy
When it stops, you'll know you've heard it all your life.
— Cormac McCarthy
The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.
— Cormac McCarthy
He sat leaning forward in the seat with his elbows on the empty seatback in front of him and his chin on his forearms and he watched the play with great intensity. He'd notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all.
— Cormac McCarthy
I think what is being pointed out is that human consciousness and reality are not the same thing.
— Cormac McCarthy
In truth they did not look like men who might have whiskey they hadnt drunk.
— Cormac McCarthy
People think they know what they want but they generally dont. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways. People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things.
— Cormac McCarthy
He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, dont you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
— Cormac McCarthy
He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.
— Cormac McCarthy
Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
— Cormac McCarthy
The other thing is the old people, and I keep comin back to them. They look at me it's always a question. Years back I dont remember that. I dont remember it when I was sheriff back in the fifties. You see em and they dont even look confused. They just look crazy. That bothers me. It's like they woke up and they dont know how they got where they're at. Well, in a manner of speakin they dont.
— Cormac McCarthy