Quotes from Larry McMurtry

She had always loved to tease and considered it an irony of her life that she was often drawn to men who didn't recognize teasing even when she was inflicting it on them.

I don't claim to know much: cards, fucking, and dentistry about covers it," Doc said.

he had learned in his years of tracking Indians that things which seemed impossible often weren't. They only became so if one thought about them too much so that fear took over.

Do you know what it means to be heartbroken? It means your heart isn't whole, so you can't really do anything wholeheartedly.

Death and worse happened on the plains.

Are you expecting a war party?" Call asked the judge. "You seem to be thoroughly armed." "I expect perdition, always have," the judge replied. "I keep this building at my back, and several guns handy, in case perdition arrives in a form that's susceptible to bullets. I expect it will come in the disease form, though. I'm susceptible to diseases, and you can't shoot a goddamn disease.

You're like a starving person whose stomach is shrunk up from not having any food. You're shrunk up from not wanting nothing.

You better introduce yourself before you start talking Latin.

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

Things are just put together wrong. There's so much shit in the world a man's gonna get in it sooner or later, whether he's careful or not.

The whole point of loyalty was not to change: stick with those who stuck with you.

His memories were too sad, his hopes too thin. To have to say things on paper seemed a terrible task, for it stirred the memories.

It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author's affection longest. It may be that one loses affection for the major characters because they suck off so much energy as one pushes them through their lives.

Little by little, the look of the land changes by the men we admire.

He wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves. He didn't know.

perhaps as he grew older he would learn to trust mysteries and not fear them.

We mostly quarreled. He wanted what I wouldn't give. I wanted what he didn't have.

When dawn spread its cool clear flush over the meadows and fields and thorny pastures to the north and east, Duane pulled an old lawn chair out of the cabin and sat down to watch, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands. It was chilly enough that he threw an old poncho over his lap.

He had known several men who had lost limbs in battle; the men all claimed that they still felt things in the place where the limb had been. It was natural enough, then, that with Bill suddenly gone he and Gus would continue to have some of the feelings that went with friendship, even though the friend was gone.

He was tired of seeing his family only in dreams.

I think we spent our best years fighting on the wrong side.

Jake, you're a dern grasshopper," Augustus said. "You ride in yesterday talking Montana, and today you're talking California.

I suppose she's just dying of living--that's the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later.

The woman had won. In the end, it seemed they always did.