Larry McMurtry

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“She sighed. Men were a pain.”

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

“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.”

“Self-parody is the first portent of age.”

“If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.”

“True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriends - and he accepts it.”

“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.”

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

“Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.”

“Americans don't want cowboys to be gay.”

“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.”

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

“It's just that it's fearsome for a man to have a woman start thinking right in front of him. It always leads to trouble.”

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

“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.”

“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.”