381 Quotes by Larry McMurtry

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 pride myself on being able to put up with a lot,” Nellie said. “But bagpipers are pretty much my limit.

Live through it,” Call said. “That’s all we can do.

He was tired of seeing his family only in dreams.

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

Now there was a crack, a kind of canyon, between the Woodrow Call sitting with Teresa on the train and the Woodrow Call who had made the campfire that morning and saddled his horse. The crack was permanent, the canyon deep. He could not get across it, back to himself. His last moments as himself had been spent casually – making a campfire, drinking coffee, saddling a horse.

Even experienced men were apt to flounder badly in crises if they lacked leadership.

One reason I’ve hung on to book selling is that it’s progressive – the opposite of writing, pretty much. Eventually all novelists, if they persist too long, get worse. No reason to name names, since no one is spared. Writing great fiction involves some combination of energy and imagination that cannot be energized or realized forever. Strong talents can simply exhaust their gift, and they do.

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