You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

The line expresses a hard-earned stoicism: misfortune is not a complete ledger, because we can’t see the alternate futures it prevents. What feels like “bad luck” may divert us from outcomes that would have been even more destructive, and the mind’s tendency to imagine a better path is therefore unreliable. The quote also implies humility about causality—life’s chain of events is too complex to audit—and suggests a pragmatic response to setbacks: endure them without assuming they are uniquely unjust or final. In McCarthy’s moral universe, where chance and violence often govern, the thought can read as a grim consolation rather than optimism.