Larry McMurtry Quotes

I'm tired of justice, ain't you?

There's nothing that sweetens the breath like a cedar toothpick, unless it's mint. And mint don't grow in these parts.

There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

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

I needed a man," Call replied. "I was hoping he might turn out to be a fighter." "No, he's just a jailer," Billy said.

There seem to be no way he could stop anything that was happening, although it all felt wrong.

It was something he had always done - moved apart, so he could be alone and think things or a little.

I ain't kin to nobody in this world. I don't want to be. I won't be.

Self-parody is the first portent of age.

If I'd have wanted civilization I'd have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living,

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

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

I was just doodling at the typewriter,

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.

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

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

Getting up early and feeling awake was the one skill he had never truly perfected - he got up, of course, but it never felt natural.

passing insults back and forth, as if they were biscuits.

Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

Don't be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.

He gathers information that we can't see, and puts it together.

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

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

It was as if his whole life had suddenly lodged in his throat, a raw bite he could neither spit out nor swallow.

A good title can save a book,

He ought to let the past keep its glow and not try to mix it with what he had in the present.

He was tired of seeing his family only in dreams.

When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.

People got opinions, that's all they've got.

There was said to be measuring of penises at the Orchid, but was it true and if so what did that mean?

A man that ain't willin' to cheat for a poke don't want it bad enough.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.

During the day he had not trusted enough, and had worn himself out with pointless scurryings.

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity - they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits.

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

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

They don't know it, but the wrath of the Lord is about to descend upon them.

Losing weight. When we finish eating this horse I

You're the only man I know whose brain don't work unless it's in the shade.

Alone. "A military unit is a fine thing when it works," he said. "But it usually don't work. A solitary feat of arms is better, if the foe is worthy.

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

She didn't know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn't want to touch it or even look at it.

It was a quiet day in Tombstone.

Texas is rich in unredeemed dreams

A sleeping man would miss the best of the evening, and the moonrise as well.

Her own folly amused her: she had once thought of herself as smart - but look at where she was.

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.

It's very peculiar, the situations life presents one with, Father Geoff reflected.

it seemed he had to be talking every waking minute as a means of holding his own fears in balance.

I won't tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman.

Woodrow don't mention nothing he can keep from mentioning. You couldn't call him a mentioner.

Figure the reason you don't have much to say is you probably never met a man who liked to hear a woman talk.

No matter how well he worked. It was a little discouraging: the harder he tried to please the Captain, the less the Captain seemed to be pleased.

His purpose was to get done what needed to be done, and what needed to be done was simple, if not easy.

Could any woman live every day with that level of masculinity?

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

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

I sing about life. I am happy, but life is sad.

I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.

He might die, but at least he could fight first, and not simply pass his days shaking at the expectation of slaughter.

A man that sleeps all night wastes too much of life.

In the last year or two he had not only grown indifferent to company, he had begun to find it irritating.

I just got gang-egged, or egg-banged or something.
Sheriff Toots Burns.

He loved the way she smelled in the mornings; he liked to sniff at her shoulders or her throat.

Basically Jake just dreamed his way through life and somehow got by with it.

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

It was something, what must go through men's mind where women were concerned, to cause them to behave so strangely.

Better by far never to have known the pleasure than to have the pain that followed.

The only bookstore I had was the paperback rack at the drugstore.

You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations.
Augustus "Gus" McCrae

Maude Jones, had killed herself with a shotgun one morning, leaving a note which merely said, 'Can't stand listening to this wind no more.

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

This is a damn useless conversation. Goodbye. (Charles Goodnight to Woodrow Call)

I don't eat the white of eggs if I can help it," Jasper said. "I hear it causes blindness.

Part of him wanted to remember; part of him needed to forget.

Give Call a grievance, however silly, and he would save it like money.

The skinny ones last longer than the fat ones," Louisa said. "You'll probably last till you're about sixty.

That things were mysterious did not make them less valuable.

No half measures, he muttered several times. It was his personal motto; he intended to have it latinised and put on a crest.

Nothing good ever comes without a price.

Maude Rainey was built like a barrel, with a bosom as big as buckets and a voice that some claimed would make hair fall out.

I'll pass on snow myself, when I have the option.

You ought to take more chances," I said.
"I took too many earlier," she said. "I'm sorry.

We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That's the wild for you - it's got its dangers, which is part of the beauty.

Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways.

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

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

And it's the only whorehouse in town. They say if you can sprout up twelve inches of dick you get to fuck free.

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

Members of the Academy are mostly urban people. We are an urban nation. We are not a rural nation. It's not easy even to get a rural story made.

In times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.

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

Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.

They probably think the sun won't come up unless you're there to allow it.

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

It was wearying, trying to adjust to all the paces life required.

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

The family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off.