Quotes from Larry McMurtry

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit

Of course, children were endless work. They came when you didn't want them and had needs you didn't always want to meet. Worst of all they died no matter how much you loved them. The death of her own had frozen the hope inside her harder than the wintery ground. Her hopes had frozen hard and she vowed to keep it that way, and yet she hadn't. The hopes thawed.

Crowded up in a room, it was difficult for her to keep herself—on the grass, with the sky far above, it was easy.

When folks get rich all of a sudden it makes them feel sort of guilty to be around folks who've stayed poor.

don't care if they're horses or women or Indians or what. I learned long ago there's much to be said for dumbness.

swinging off the bay. "We rode all night

A man can only do a given thing so many times with freshness and spirit--then, no matter what it is, it becomes like an office task. I enjoy cards and whoring, but even cards and whoring can grow boresome. You tup your wife a thousand times and that becomes an office task, too.

She may know what I am, though, Lorena said. Yes, she'll know you're a human being. You don't have to duck your head to nobody. Half the women in this country probably started out like you did, workin' in saloons.

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.

He didn't like it that there were men who could scare him so badly that he was even afraid to take a shit.

Maude Rainey was built like a barrel, with a bosom as big as buckets and a voice that some claimed would make hair fall out.

The Western photographers also managed to put the people in scale with the landscapes, to the amazement of Easterners.

The play may actually have profited from having an unworthy hero: Custer, for all his early brilliance

He had know several men who blew their heads off, and he has pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.

We rarely hear the names of these early Western photographers now, though they were quite important: Carleton

Still, he was a salaried man. Even though Katie, who had been a good wife, was dead, he was not his own master.

If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity—they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.

It was an odd thing, but true, that the death of an enemy could affect you as much almost as much as the death of a friend.

If you mean Miss Austen, I don't find her particularly romantic, Tasmin declared. Can't say that I care much about the marriage arrangements among the middle classes. Tasmin Berrybender

It's been quite a party ain't it?" Lonesome Dove

Call had never noticed that he had a trick. The man never wasted five minutes appreciating himself; it would have meant losing five minutes off whatever job he had decided he wanted to get done that day.

They're finished," Bigfoot said. "We've all got a finishing point. These boys have just come to theirs.

How about a kiss?" "Are you man enough to try?" she asked.