Quotes from Larry McMurtry

In that respect, Gus was unusual, for most men didn't talk. He would blab right up until he shoved his old carrot in, and then would be blabbing again, before it was even dry.

Yet here she was, not with Clara in a theater or a nice hotel in London, but on a bleak prairie, with not even one house within a hundred miles, caring for an old killer who wanted her to cut his ruined leg off so he could get well and kill again. She had studied and educated herself, but she had not escaped.

That in itself didn't bother her, though. If there was one thing she didn't need to do, it was to talk to a man.

I can work and think too," Call said. "You're the only man I know whose brain don't work unless it's in the shade.

Hurry up and get changed, and don't call my daughter a bitch again.' 'No promises,' Lois said. 'You know what she's doing as well as I do, Gene. She doesn't give a damn about Sonny, she just wants to hurt us and get a little attention while she's doing it. What is that but bitchery?

With Call suddenly determined to leave that very day, Augustus found himself regretful, nostalgic already for things he hadn't particularly cared for but hated to think of losing.

Francis Goes to the Army.

It's not the end of the world, Pea. Just pick up and keep going.

We don't rent pigs.

There was something different about her, Jake had to admit. She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met in a woman. Certain mountains were that way, like the Bighorns. The air around them was so clear you could ride toward them for days without seeming to get any closer. And yet, if you kept riding, you would get to the mountains. He was not so sure he would ever get to Lorie. Even when she took him, there was a distance between them.

Son, this is a sad thing," Augustus said. "Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don't go attempting vengeance. You've got more urgent business… Don't be trying to give back pain for pain.

He began to wish that somehow things could have been rounded off a little better. Of course he knew death was no respecter. People just dropped when they dropped, whether they had rounded things off or not.

The coyote was moving purposely; perhaps it smelled the cooking meat too.

Indeed, looking back on her twenty-four years of marriage to Rudyard—something, admittedly, that she seldom did—Aurora could not remember a single thing that had been his fault, unless it was Emma, and even that was questionable.

Roscoe was appalled, for the clothes that were being destroyed were the only ones he owned. Then he remembered that he was going to be killed anyway and felt a little better.

In the whole two years of their marriage she had never said anything similar, anything to indicate that she felt their being together was something less than a part of natural law.

Men were odd. One day they were hard, far too hard; the next day they were soft, far too soft. They were like porcupines: prickly on the outside, but with soft bellies.

It seemed to him there was never much time with women. Before you could look at one twice you were into an argument and they were telling you what was going to happen.

None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked. The sensible way, which he had pursued once or twice in his life, had always proved boring ... There was much more enterprise in certain follies, it seemed to him.

I've heard of you, McCrae. But I didn't know you was so old." "Oh, I wasn't till lately," Augustus said.

What we done wrong the first time was doing it honest. I'm through with honest. It's every man for himself in this country, and that's the way I like it. There ain't much law and mostly it can be outrun.

Talk's the way to kill it. Anything gets boring if you talk about it enough, even death.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard.

I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live." Call