Quotes from Larry McMurtry

I'm a fastidious bookman and have never liked reading books with library markings or other messy defects.

What part of a man is it best to shoot at?" asked Sean. "His horse," said Jake.

I'm in the mood to travel. Once you boys get settled I may go to China, for all you know.

There can be secondary and tertiary reasons for wanting a particular book. One is the pleasure of holding the physical book itself: savoring the type, the binding, the book's feel and heft. All these things can be enjoyed apart from literature, which some, but not all, books contain.

Joe had a habit of staring straight ahead. Though Call assumed he had a neck joint like other men, he had never seen him use it.

Certainly," Augustus said. "I never met a soul in this world as normal as me.

losing weight. When we finish eating this horse I

He had done hard work all his life and was ready to stop, but he couldn't stop.

Soon the whites would come, of course, but what he was seeing was a moment between, not the plains as they had been, or as they would be, but a moment of true emptiness, with thousands of miles of grass resting unused, occupied only by remnants—of the buffalo, the Indians, the hunters.

You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it," Augustus said. "If you only come face-to-face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day—that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave.

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, usually within a few days. In his case it had led to nothing much, just excessive drunkenness and reckless card playing. There was more enterprise in certain follies, it seemed to him.

Por que siempre ha sido propio el amor que después de los besos vengan los suspiros.

There was a period when he wanted to go back, when it would have been nice to sit with Maggie a few minutes and watch her fiddle with her hair. But he chose the river, and his solitude, thinking that in time the feeling would pass, and best so: he would stop thinking about Maggie, she would stop thinking about him... But it didn't pass--all that passed were years.

Don't be trying to give back pain for pain," he said. "You can't get even measures in business like this.

recent experience had shown him that men had to use what hope they could muster, to stay alive.

Son, this is a sad thing," Augustus said. "Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don't you go attempting vengeance.

Love's a terrible price to pay for company, ain't it, Matty?" Caleb said. "I won't pay it, myself. I'd rather do without the company.

Well, that's where we started for," he said. "Me and Call have always liked to get where we started for, even if it don't make a damn bit of sense.

What do you do with bugs?" Joe asked, feeling that the man was the strangest he had ever met. "I study them," the man said. Joe hardly knew what to say. What was there to study about a bug? Either it bit you or it didn't.

Jake would have done better to let them hang him," he said. "You know how he suffers when he has to work.

It seemed to him the highest principle, loyalty. He preferred it to honor. He had never been exactly sure what men meant when they spoke of their honor, though it had been a popular word during the time of the War. He was sure, though, what he meant when he spoke of loyalty. A man didn't desert his comrades, his troop, his leader. If he did he was, in Call's book, worthless.

He and Augustus had discussed the question of leadership many times. "It ain't complicated," Augustus maintained. "Most men doubt their own abilities.

In the end he overtalked it, like he did everything

You boys have lived too south a life," he said. "Your blood gets thin, when you're living south. This ain't cold. If we're still in these parts in a month or two you'll see some weather that makes this seem like summer.