Quotes by Larry McMurtry

“The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.”

“How about a kiss?Are you man enough to try? she asked.”

“It's funny, leaving a place, ain't it?" he said. "You never do know when you'll get back.”

“It doesn't do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to.”

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

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

“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.”

“It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good.”

“It seemed to him there was never much time with women. Before you could look at one twice, you were into an argument, and they were telling you what was going to happen.”

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

“Once, when I was about ten, we were approaching the ranch after veering north to look at some pasturage when we saw a small barefoot boy racing along the hot road with terror in his face. My father...”

“It's happiness to see you.”

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

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

“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...”

“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 th...”

“WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnakenot a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were havin...”

“For most of the hours of the dayand most of the months of the yearthe sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and st...”

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

“Jake, youre a dern grasshopper, Augustus said. You ride in yesterday talking Montana, and today youre talking California.”