I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

You are either born a writer or you are not.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.[Interview, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009]

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.[Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]

I hear people talking about going on a vacation or something and I think, what is that about? I have no desire to go on a trip. My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.