Larry McMurtry

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

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

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

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

She sighed. Men were a pain.

You should marry me", he said. "I will be good to you. I am not like these men. I have manners. You would see how kind I would be. I would never leave you. You could have an easy life.

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__ 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__ 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__ 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__ 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.

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.

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.

The thought cross his mind that he ought to have married her and not gone rambling. If he had, he wouldn't be in such a fix. But he felt little fear; just an overpowering fatigue. Life had slipped out of line. It was unfair, it was too bad, but he couldn't find the energy to fight it any longer.

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

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

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

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.

No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination.

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

But the English are different, and they don__ know how to be other than different.