Quotes from Larry McMurtry

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 feisty gentlemen.

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

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

Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning. If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.

It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.

I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice. . . You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it. 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.

It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight, he added

Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.

He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had 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.

I think its a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.

Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn't remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation. "I hate a man that talks rude," he said. "I won't tolerate it.

If I had a mind to rent pigs, I'd be mighty upset. A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped.

My main skills are talking and cooking biscuits,' Augustus said. 'And getting drunk on the porch.

I never met a soul in this world as normal as me.

I hate rude behavior in a man,' he explained in his quiet, unassuming drawl. 'I won't tolerate it.' He politely tipped his hat, and rode away.

From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.

Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.

At times he felt that he had almost rather not be in love with her, for it brought him no peace. What was the use of it, if it was only going to be painful?

Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.

Nobody run off with her," Roscoe said. "She just run off with herself, I guess.

A man who wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough. --Augustus "Gus" McCrae

Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius -- Dostoyevsky perhaps.