Larry Mcmurtry Quotes

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.

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

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

The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

The reason men are so awful is because some woman has spoiled them.

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

But just let me tell you something, son, a woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose. So you better just get over it.

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.

Who asked them dern pigs?” he said. “I guess they tracked us,” Augustus said. “They’re enterprising pigs.

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.

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.

I figured out something, Lorie,” he said. “I figured out why you and me get along so well. You know more than you say and I say more than I know. That means we’re a perfect match, as long as we don’t hang around one another more than an hour at a stretch.

You don't look strong enough to trouble nobody around here.... We grow our own troubles--it would be a novelty to have some we ain't already used to.

I see you’re in a hurry to get someplace. It’s a great mistake to hurry.” “Why?” Joe asked, puzzled by almost everything the traveler said. “Because the grave’s our destination,” Mr. Sedgwick said. “Those who hurry usually get to it quicker than those who take their time.

Incompetents invariably made trouble for people other than themselves.

Uva uvum vivendo varia fit

You know Deets is like me - he's not one to quit on a garment just because it's got a little age - spoken by Augustus McCrae

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

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.

Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough,

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

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

By the time the shade had reached the river, Augustus would have mellowed with the evening and be ready for some intelligent conversation, which usually involved talking to himself.

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

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

Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.

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

WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over.

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream. —T. K. Whipple, Study Out the Land

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

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.

Once started, love couldn't easily be stopped.

Deets slapped his leg and laughed, the thought was so funny. When the rest of the outfit finally wondered down from the house they found the two of them grinning back and forth at one another. "Look at 'em," Augustus said. "You'd think they just discovered teeth.

Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look surprised when he got kicked.

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

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.

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

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.

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

You have to remember that I've been lonely for a long time. Loneliness is like ice. After you've been lonely long enough you don't realize you're cold, but you are... I don't know, maybe at the center of me there's some ice that never will melt, maybe it's just been there too long. But you mustn't worry. You didn't put it there.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

There would be a trial, of course. But I had watched a few trials in Thalia, and I had seen people a lot dumber than Hud get away with a lot worse than what he did.

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.

no medicine man or wise man knew why one man died and another lived. Wise men themselves often died before fools, and cowards before men who were brave.

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

. . . 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.

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.

I sometimes think the sexual organs were put there to keep the human race humble," she said. "They've certainly kept me humble.

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

Pussyfooting is a vice I have been concerned to avoid.

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

Well, I got to admit I still like a fight,” Augustus said. “They sharpen the wits. The only other thing that does that is talking to women, which is usually more dangerous.

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

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

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

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

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew. It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air. It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.

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.

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.

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.

Why hell yes, Joe Bob! A cripple can always get himself a wooden leg, or a glass eye, or a metal hook for a hand, or any of that mess -- but there ain't no known substitute for a big dick. I guess you is out of luck!

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

Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around.

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.

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?

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.

How he died hadn't been funny, Newt thought. "It's all right, though," Augustus said. "It's mostly bones we're riding over anyway. Why, think of all the buffalo that have died on these plains. Buffalo and other critters too. And the Indians have been here forever; their bones are down there in the earth. I'm told that over in the Old Country you can't dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones and such. People have been living there since the beginning, and their bones have kinda filled up the ground. It's interesting to think about, all the bones in the ground. But it's just fellow creatures, it's nothing to shy from.

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the little backyard was filled with the little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.

As she was finishing her song, the notes dipped down low—they carried a sadness that was more than a sadness at the death of men; rather it was a sadness at the lives of men, and of women. It reminded those who heard the rising, dipping notes, of notes of hopes that had been born, and, yet, died; of promise, and the failure of promise.

In Washington, D. C., there was Loudermilk's, in Philadelphia Leary's, in Seattle Shorey's, in Portland Powell's, in Boston Goodspeed's Milk Street, In Cleveland Kay's, in Cincinnati and Long Beach Old Mr. Smith's two acres of books, and so on. In that time many large book barns in New England were stuffed with books. All the citites around the Great Lakes had large bookshops. Some of these old behmoths contained a million books or more.

Virtually all his life he had been in the position of leading groups of men, yet the truth was he had never liked groups. Men he admired for their abilities in action almost always brought themselves down in his estimation if he had to sit around and listen to them talk—or watch them drink or play cards or run off after women. Listening to men talk usually made him feel more alone than if he were a mile away by himself under a tree. He had never really been able to take part in the talk. The endless talk of cards and women made him feel more set apart—and even a little vain. If that was the best they could think of, then they were lucky they had him to lead them. It seemed immodest, but it was a thought that often came to him.

Is growin' up always miserable?" Sonny asked. "Nobody seems to enjoy it much." "Oh, it ain't necessarily misearble," Sam replied. "About eighty percent of the time, I guess." They were silent again, Sam the Lion thinking of the lovely, spritely girl he had once led into the water, right there, where they were sitting. "We ought to go to a real fishin' tank next year," Sam said finally. "It don't do to think about things like that too much. If she were here now I'd probably be crazy again in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous?" A half-hour later, when they had gathered up the gear and were on the way to town, he answered his own question. "It ain't really, " he said. "Being crazy about a woman like her's always the right thing to do. Being a decrepit old bag of bones is what's ridiculous.

You should be proud of her. She cracked the wall, and I never thought I'd live to see it cracked." What are you talking about?" I said. "What wall?" The one you built around you," Jeannie said. "Don't say it wasn't there. It was there. I tried to crack it but I didn't have the confidence, you know? What happened is, it cracked me, but that's okay, I'm working around my crack pretty well. But you were dying behind your wall, and you're lucky to have a daughter who has the guts to crack it. I hope she smashes it to fucking smithereens and you never have another peaceful day in your whole fucking life, Mr. Deck!

Watching them, Harmony felt too shaken to take a step. Eddie and Sheba were young; but she herself had become old. Even if she wasn’t particularly old if you just counted years, the fact was years were no way to count. Happenings were the way to count, the big happening that separated her from youth or even middle age was the death of her daughter, Pepper. That death made her realize that life, once you got around to producing children, was no longer about being pretty or having boyfriends or making money – it was about protecting children; getting them raised to the point where they could try life as adults. It didn’t have to be just children that come out of your body, either. It could be anyone young who needed something you had to give. Some grown men were children; some grown women, too. Harmony knew that she had spent a good part of her life, taking care of just such men. But now that she felt old she didn’t think she wanted to spend much more of her energy protecting men who had had a good chance to grow up, but had blown it. If she never had another boyfriend – something she had been worrying about, on the plane – it might be a little dull in some areas, like sexual areas, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. What would be the end of the world would be to let some little girl like Sheba get in the car with a bad man who would make a U-turn across the street and kill her right there in front of the pay phones, where pimps and crack dealers were making their calls.