"The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast,
and you miss all you are traveling for."
— Louis L'Amour

"I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen."
— Louis L'Amour (Sackett's Land)

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning. "
— Louis L'Amour

"Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.""
— Louis L'Amour

"One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!"
— Louis L'Amour

"For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time."
— Louis L'Amour

"I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn."
— Louis L'Amour (Education of a Wandering Man)

"No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process."
— Louis L'Amour

"When you go to a country, you must learn how to say two things: how to ask for food, and to tell a woman that you love her. Of these the second is more important, for if you tell a woman you love her, she will certainly feed you."
— Louis L'Amour

"The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance."
— Louis L'Amour

"Have faith in God but keep your powder dry."
— Louis L'Amour

"A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time."
— Louis L'Amour (Education of a Wandering Man)

". . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?”

I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know?

“There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning."
— Louis L'Amour (The Lonesome Gods)

"The only thing that never changes is that everything changes."
— Louis L'Amour

"A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think."
— Louis L'Amour (Education of a Wandering Man Col)

"Today is all we have, tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality."
— Louis L'Amour

"A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from pretty elegant furnishings."
— Louis L'Amour

"Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more."
— Louis L'Amour

"When at the typewriter I am no longer where I site but am away across the mountains, in ancient cities or on the Great Plains among the buffalo. Often I think of what pitiful fools are those who use mind-altering drugs to seek feelings they do not have, each drug taking a little more from what they have of mind, leaving them a little less. Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing, and no drugs are needed."
— Louis L'Amour (Education of a Wandering Man)

"A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realists, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very old or very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads."
— Louis L'Amour

"What is education but a conditioning of the mind to a society and a way of life. "
— Louis L'Amour (The Californios)

"A man marries by accident, a woman by design."
— Louis L'Amour

"Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
"
— Louis L'Amour

""Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like, or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.""
— Louis L'Amour (Ride the River: The Sacketts)

"Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone."
— Louis L'Amour

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do"
— Louis L'Amour

"Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen"
— Louis L'Amour

"Like I say, I killed a man or two but I'm no thief. My ma raised me better."
— Louis L'Amour (The Iron Marshal)

"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say , this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds."
— Louis L'Amour (The Walking Drum)

"This here's a hard country. If a man ain't fit, he can't last - Kilkenny"
— Louis L'Amour

"But in the West few men would risk bothering a woman. It was the one thing the frontier would not accept - Kilkenny"
— Louis L'Amour

"No man can put a rope on the past and hope to snub it down. The best thing is to learn to it ride the new trails - Kilkenny"
— Louis L'Amour

"I don't believe you know anything about a man like me or a country like this. It takes rough men, Miss Fair, to tame a rough country; rough men, but good men. Your father is in that class. As for you, I don't think you'd measure up, and you'll do well to leave it. You're a hothouse flower, very soft, very appealing and very useless...In the world you are going to, men want pretty useless women. They want toys for their lighte moments, and we have those women out here, too, only we have another name for them. We want women who can make a home, and if need be, handle a rifle."
— Louis L'Amour

"I have told many, yet when I go down that last trail, I know there will be a thousand stories hammering at my skull, demanding to be told."
— Louis L'Amour (Education of a Wandering Man)

"He never knew when he was whipped ... So he never was......."
— Louis L'Amour (To the Far Blue Mountains: The Sacketts)

"To a fool time brings only age not wisdom."
— Louis L'Amour

"There are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond."
— Louis L'Amour (The Haunted Mesa)

""Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on""
— Louis L'Amour

"Raindrops felt his cheeks with blind, questing fingers...the black trunks of the trees were like iron bars against the gray of gathering pools." Radigan"
— Louis L'Amour

"Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years."
— Louis L'Amour

"If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined."
— Louis L'Amour (The Man Called Noon)

""Destarte! How musical! What does it mean?" "You can't say it except in Mescalero. It means Morning, but that isn't what it means, either. Indian words are more than just that. They also mean the feel and the sound of the name. It means like Crack of Dawn, the first bronze light that makes the buttes stand out against the gray desert. It means the first sound you hear of a brook curling over some rocks-some trout jumping and a beaver crooning. It means the sound a stallion makes when he whistles at some mares just as the first puff of wind kicks up at daybreak. "It means like you get up in the first light and you and her go out of the wickiup, where it smells smoky and private and just you and her, and kind of safe with just the two of you there, and you stand outside and smell the first bite of the wind coming down from the high divide and promising the first snowfall. Well, you just can't say what it means in English. Anyway, that was her name. Destarte."
"
— Louis L'Amour (Hondo)

"- This Indian wife you have...
- Had. She's dead.
- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up
an unhappy memory.
- I can't remember anything unhappy
about Destarte. "
— Louis L'Amour (Hondo)

"It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.'""
— Louis L'Amour

"For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time. "
— Louis L'Amour