Streets of Laredo Quotes

“Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo

“This is a damn useless conversation. Goodbye. (Charles Goodnight to Woodrow Call)”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo

“He doesn't talk much, though," she added.
"I don't care whether he talks or not," Lorena said. I wouldn't marry a man just for conversation. I'd rather read and having to know how than listen to some man talk.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo

“There was no degree of competence that would assure anyone of survival, and no scale that would tell a commander which man would live and which man would die.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“He was just a husband and a salaried man. Choice didn’t play any part in his life.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“She didn’t know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn’t want to touch it or even look at it.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“It was not so much that he didn't mind his own business; he just didn't recognize that there was any business that wasn't his.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo

“The truth was, half the time he felt miserable and guilty even when he wasn’t neglecting his wife, or his children, or his chores.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“All this traveling by train weakens the memory—it’s bound to,” Call said. “A man that travels horseback needs to remember where the water holes are, but a man that rides in a train can forget about water holes, because trains don’t drink.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“Maria didn’t know why men resented the very women who gave them the most pleasure, and gave it generously. It was foolish, very foolish, of men to resent the good that came from women. Still, they did.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“Call listened with some amusement—not that the incident hadn’t been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn’t reach deep.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“The horses had all been dumping; several piles of horseshit steamed in the dirty snow.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“I wouldn’t give a nickel’s worth of dogshit for the whole bunch of you, and I don’t care what it says in the papers.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“It’s not the end of the world, Pea. Just pick up and keep going.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“Men were odd. One day they were hard, far too hard; the next day they were soft, far too soft. They were like porcupines: prickly on the outside, but with soft bellies.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“Gus knew himself. He knew how he wanted to be, and he had chosen in the critical hour not to accept being less.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“Yet here she was, not with Clara in a theater or a nice hotel in London, but on a bleak prairie, with not even one house within a hundred miles, caring for an old killer who wanted her to cut his ruined leg off so he could get well and kill again. She had studied and educated herself, but she had not escaped.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“The bad things that had happened to her had not killed her. They had not even killed the laughter in her.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“It was a great annoyance to Billy that because of a long shit and a short nap he had lost his horse. But that was the truth of it and there was nothing he could do but limp along.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo

“Still, he was a salaried man. Even though Katie, who had been a good wife, was dead, he was not his own master.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“Not too many men, in his experience, had achieved a great thing, even one. Very few ever achieved more than one, he knew.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“It seemed to him the highest principle, loyalty. He preferred it to honor. He had never been exactly sure what men meant when they spoke of their honor, though it had been a popular word during the time of the War. He was sure, though, what he meant when he spoke of loyalty. A man didn’t desert his comrades, his troop, his leader. If he did he was, in Call’s book, worthless.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo