Quotes from Larry McMurtry

It doesn't do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to," Clara said. "It's just a waste.

Ride with an outlaw, die with him, he added. I admit it's a harsh code. But you rode on the other side long enough to know how it works. I'm sorry you crossed the line, though. Jake's momentary optimism had passed, and he felt tired and despairing. He would have liked a good bed in a whorehouse and a nice night's sleep. I never seen no line, Gus, he said. I was just trying to get to Kansas without getting scalped.

The smartest man alive can't learn much about a woman in two weeks.

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 liked to get off by himself, a mile or so from camp, and listen to the country, not the men.

Great readers (are) those who know early that there is never going to be time to read all there is to read, but do their darnedest anyway.

It was inconsiderate, she thought, how blandly people mentioned the future in the sick rooms. Phrases like next summer were always popping out; people made such assumptions about their own continuity.

I don't know why you would even want to stay with me, I said. T.R. looked stunned for a second and then whipped her elbow into my side as hard as she could--months later it was determined that the jab cracked a rib. Oh, get fucked! she said, jumping up. No wonder you don't have no girlfriend if you don't have no more feelings than to say a horrible thing like that. All I want to do is love you. Ain't you even gonna let me?

I suppose you set up reading the Good Book all night-spoken by Woodrow Call

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

But, if one cuts more deeply, the lonesome dove is Newt, a lonely teenager who is the unacknowledged son of Captain Call and a kindly whore named Maggie, who is now dead. So the central theme of the novel is not the stocking of Montana but unacknowledged paternity. All of the Hat Creek Outfit, including particularly Augustus McCrae, want Call to accept the boy as his son.

The crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes.

Listening to women ain't the fashion in this part of the country.--Augustus McCrae

He sat where he was, on Mouse, in the grip of terrible indecision. He almost wished something would happen—a sudden attack of Mexicans or something. He might be killed, but at least he wouldn't have to make a choice between disobeying Mr. Gus and disobeying Lorena.

Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

For most of the hours of the day—and most of the months of the year—the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans.

Life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want one thing too much it's likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and

Certainly on the vast windy plain, there was plenty of nothing to be looked at.

she remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn't last long, once they became men.

It seemed to him harder, as he got older, to find a simple way of life.

Buffalo Hump knew his son was brave, but that was not enough. If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.

He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn't do barring a miracle.

Young things mainly belong to themselves. How they grow up depends on who gets attached to them.

Monkey John looked at the dead boy. By God, life is cheap up here on the goddamned Canadian River. Cheap, Blue Duck answered. And it might get cheaper.