Quotes from Larry McMurtry

I wish you'd stop talking about your own death, Gus said, in a joking tone. It ain't genteel.

You could have sniffed once or twice," Karla said. "It said in an article I read that the smell of women's undergarments is very exciting to most men.

Ain't this been a hell of a time?

I ain't sick, Gus, Lippy said, a little embarrassed by his tears. Soon he felt a little better. Lonesome Dove was hidden—he could barely see the top of the little church house across the chaparral flats. It's funny, leaving a place, ain't it? he said. You never do know when you'll get back.

When his second wife died and he was free to propose, he did one day, on a picnic to the place they called her orchard, and she refused instantly, without losing a trace of merriment. Why not? he asked. I'm used to my own ways, she said. You might try to make me do something I wouldn't want to do. Don't I indulge your every whim? he asked. Yes, but that's because you haven't got me, Clara said. I bet you'd change fast if I ever let you get the upper hand. p340

Maybe, Gus said. We've had a lot of practice, going on expeditions for nothing. That's how it mostly turned out. You ride awhile in one direction and then you turn around and ride back.

soon he would have to learn to call his depression happiness in order to endure it.

I could hear [the old ladies from Thalia] whispering how Granddad had gone to a better place. They could think and go to hell; I didn't believe it. Not unless dirt is a better place than air.

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live." ~spoken by Augustus McCrae

One of the things that Ang brings to all of his projects is his deep sense of being a double exile, an outsider's outsider.

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.

No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.

Americans don't want cowboys to be gay.

True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriends - and he accepts it.

People would be bored shitless if they had to love only the good in someone they care about.

A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination.

They say money kinda melts when you take it across a border.

If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.

A man that will go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.

No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination.