Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen Quotes

“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.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond

“In Washington, D. C., there was Loudermilk's, in Philadelphia Leary's, in Seattle Shorey's, in Portland Powell's, in Boston Goodspeed's Milk Street, In Cleveland Kay's, in Cincinnati and Long Beach Old Mr. Smith's two acres of books, and so on. In that time many large book barns in New England were stuffed with books. All the citites around the Great Lakes had large bookshops. Some of these old behmoths contained a million books or more.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond

“books are the fuel of genius.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond

“In my childhood the iceman came twice a week; he would carry in, with his great tongs, two fifty-pound blocks of ice, which he would put in our icebox. In a few years the iceman gave way to refrigeration, but I still, now, say “icebox” when I mean “refrigerator.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond

“Often a pullet would be killed, plucked, cut up, and cooked before the head quite realized that something was seriously amiss.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond

“The iron rule in a bookshop is that good books don't pull bad books up; bad books pull good books down. even a few bad books can make a whole room full of good books look tatty.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond

“It wasn’t until I moved to Virginia, to a pleasant valley near the Blue Ridge, that I first experienced sky deprivation, or forest claustrophobia. In Virginia I felt gloomy without knowing why—it was only after many drives home to Texas that the reason finally became clear. I began to notice that once I crossed the Mississippi at Memphis and began to proceed across the delta, the Arkansas flats, my spirits would suddenly lift. The sky had quickly opened up, become a Western sky, with Western horizons beneath it. Coming into that openness, time after time, brought relief and indeed a kind of exhilaration. This lifting (and a corresponding lowering as I drove back east) occurred many times; I began to understand that it bespoke a kind of sky longing which many Westerners have.”
― Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond