Quotes from Larry McMurtry

figured Godwin

Seems like every time I make a plan something happens to change it. Well, life's a twisting stream, Augustus said.

Gus knew himself. He knew how he wanted to be, and he had chosen in the critical hour not to accept being less.

Once you got rich you'd have to spend all your time staying rich, and that's hard thankless work. I tried it a while and quit, myself. If I can keep ten dollars ahead of the bills I'll be doin' all right.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard...but pretty in the sunlight.

I ain't kin to nobody in this world. I don't want to be. I won't be.

They say he missed that whore.

The woman, Dillard whispered. The woman. They say he missed that whore.

Aurora could not recall that she had been precisely heartbroken - her heart had never had time to get focused exactly - but for several years thereafter she did feel that life was a comedown in some respects.

JOSH DEETS SERVED WITH ME 30 YEARS. FOUGHT IN 21 ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE COMMANCHE AND KIOWA. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK. SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.

I'd rather go outlaw than be a doctor or a lawyer.

Men are about as worthless a race of people as I've ever encountered.

I don't guess I've watched you punish yourself for thirty years to be totally wrong about you.

But I ain't young enough to count on what I think bein' right, either, an' I ain't fool enough to figure on things turning out the way I expect 'em to.

They didn't understand that he talked of pleasant things and faraway places just to create a happy prospect that they could look forward to for a while. It wasn't meant to really happen, and yet women never seemed to grasp that; he had been in ticklish spots several times as their disappointment turned to anger.

Jake looked a little more sorrowful as he picked his teeth. Kilt a dentist, he said. A pure accident, but I kilt him.... Well, I've always considered dentistry a dangerous profession, Augustus said. Making a living by yanking people's teeth out is asking for trouble.

It wasn't merely damage done by the sun that was causing him to slip suddenly into Greek; it was the Scull dementia, damage from the broken seed. His father, Evanswood Scull, intermittently mad but a brilliant linguist, used to stomp into the nursery, thundering out passages in Latin, Greek, Icelandic, and Old Law French, a language which it was said that he was the only man in America to have a thorough mastery

We got all day to break horses.

I guess we could pile some rocks on her, Call said. I hate just to leave a body laying out. Woodrow, she's mostly et anyway, Gus said. Why spoil the buzzards' picnic?

though his day-to-day responsibilities had constantly shrunk over the last ten years, life did not seem easier. It just seemed smaller and a good deal more dull.

I've just served five years in a great war —the only struggle that still interests me is the conflict with the sentence, sir—the English sentence.

My grandmother is old," Famous Shoes said. "She may want to tell me a few more stories before she dies.

The bad things that had happened to her had not killed her. They had not even killed the laughter in her.

One little shot during a card game in Arkansas had started things happening—things he couldn't see the end of.