Somebody's Darling Quotes

“Perhaps our lesson had been that we had learned to laugh at everything important that didn't make sense, which was almost everything important.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“I found Elmo and Winfield out in their yard with their shirts off, idly throwing a hunting knife at a tree.

'Shit, we could become goddamn urban guerrillas, Elmo, if we could ever get the hang of how to make this knife stick,' Winfield said. 'We could go throw knives at all the studio heads and destroy capitalism.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“Being in New York was as tiring as walking around with weights on the legs. It was obvious, even after one day, that living there required training. Making it through a month in New York would be the equivalent, for a person of my age and disposition, in competing in the decathlon, in the Olympics of city life. In earlier years, the event could have been interesting, but I knew that for me it had come a little late.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“As a contract writer at Warners - one of a vanishing, bilious breed - I deal with equivocators every day, if not every hour. The studio equivocates about deals, producers equivocate about projects, directors equivocate about stories, agents equivocate about terms, unions equivocate about payoffs, actors and actresses equivocate about interpretations, cameramen equivocate about where to put the camera, writers equivocate about dialogue, and so on down the line to gofers, who probably equivocate about routes to the cigarette machines.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“I think you chase them because they're usually better looking,' she said casually. 'I know you like to have philosophic reasons worked out for everything you do, but that doesn't mean I have to believe them.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“There’s something I want to ask you,” Jill said as we turned onto the San Diego Freeway. “How come you’re always fucking other men’s wives?” I was surprised. “Are you planning to come to the defense of the nuclear family?” I asked. “No, I just want to understand that one thing about you,” she said. “I wasn’t that way my whole life, you know. I came to it late.” “That doesn’t tell me why,” she said. “Because I don’t want all of anybody any more,” I said. “I only want the parts that nobody else is using. Most married women are half unused—maybe more than half, I don’t know. The unused parts usually turn out to be the most interesting parts, for some reason.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“He had such a crisp mind - it reminded me of cereal before you pour the milk in. For several months all the minds available to me had been like cereal about two hours after you pour the milk in.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“I couldn't quite say 'If you loved me' - we had always avoided the word. A mark of good taste on both our parts.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“I'm not happy because I can't attract the women I care about most. That's sad, but it's not a tragic or a particularly uncommon problem.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“... and we'd probably would be a good team, if he could stay out of love with me, or if I could get in love with him. Neither seemed likely.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“The fact that these young women, with their trim ankles, high cheekbones, good educations, bright eyes, little bosoms, and expensive clothes, keep coming to my bungalow and often to my bed, despite the fact that I'm old, fat, often drunk, beneath them on the social scale, and in love with a dead woman, only increases Jill's impatience with her own sex. Their foolishness drives her up the wall, and my willingness to assist them in their obvious folly is a constant bone of contention between us.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“if you repeat a temporary answer often enough, it acquires a degree of permanency.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“Why tell women the truth, anyway? No need to add to their advantages.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“I knew sex was all you ever though about, she said, I just forgot.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“I have managed to love all sorts of beautiful women: tall ones and short ones, dumb ones and smart ones, loyal Penelopes and faithless sluts.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling

“Myself, I had no standards to speak of - it would never occur to me to apply a word like standards to a happenstance like love.”
― Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling