Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry

My foot's in the stirrup,
My pony won't stand;
Goodbye, old partner,
I'm leaving Cheyenne.


Leaving Cheyenne is beautiful heartfelt novel centered on themes of polyamory, marriage, responsibility, and life-style choice. The novel is gripping and difficult to put down. The story is set in the early 1900s and full of stories that seem disconnected but are so real they let you know the characters as if you knew them all your life.

Here are a few quotes that I love:
"Don't be a damn fool and marry young," he said "Specially not to no poor woman. Work about thirty more years and make you lots of money. Then go off somewhere and marry a rich widow. Don't never marry somebody who's as broke and ignorant as you are; marry somebody who knows a little about it. The you might have a chance to enjoy yourself a little." That was Dad for you. I didn't pay him much mind. He never could understand that he wasn't me. pg.16

"I don't want to marry you or nobody else. Girls who get married just to do a lot of things with boys ain't very nice. I don't like it. I'd just as soon do all those things and not be married, and I mean it. I ain't gonna marry till I have to because of having a baby, and I mean that too. And I wish I didn't even have to then." pg.29

"Just because he don't spend money don't mean he ain't got any. I don't spend much myself, and that's one reason I got so much more than most people." pg.44

"I never realized how lonesome I stayed till I got close to Molly...When I realized it was when I had been close to her and one of us was leaving. Then for a day or two the world would look twice as bad as it was." pg.95

"The homesickness was the worst part of it...It wasn't that I liked being in Archer County so much --- sometimes I hated it. But I was tied up in it; whatever happened there was happening to me, even if I wasn't there to see it. The country might not be very nice and the people might be onery; but it was my country and my people, and no other country was; no other people, either. You do better staying with what's your own, even if it's hard. Johnny carried his with him. I didn't. If you don't stick with a place, you don't have it very long." pg.106

"The best way in the world to get poor is to start living rich." pg.110

"A woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose." pg.122

“If a feller has to be lonesome, he’s better off being lonesome alone.” –pg.130

"What kind of crazy are you?" Johnny said. "Just plain crazy," I said. "I haven't got enough brains to be any other kind."pg.158

"I hadn't got a car till 1941. Besides being expensive and dangerous, I thought they was just plain ugly. I couldn't understand why so many people took such an interest in them." pg.187

"He had the highest standards of any man I ever knew - to this day Gid worries because he can't live up to those standards of his dad's." pg.203

"Well," he said. "Some have to take and some have to give, and a very few can do both. I was always just a taker, but I was damn particular about what I took, and that's important."..."I don't guess I've ever done much of either one," I said. "Aw hell," he said. "You could take a million dollars' worth, if you would. But instead you'll give out twice that much to sorry bastards that don't deserve it. And they won't put much back. I'm glad you and Gid won't marry. You'd smother him in sweetweed and he'd loaf the rest of his life. Misery makes a man work." I was embarrassed, and he went on and ate his biscuits. "Anyway, it ain't hurt your cooking," he said, and he looked up and gave me one of the longest looks I ever had in my life. I remembered that look a hundred times, whenever Gid or Jimmy looked at me across a table; they both had Mr. Fry's eyes. "Molly, if I was just ten years younger I'd take your whole two million myself," he said. "The rest of the pack could go hungry. Gid would probably be the first one starved."...I thought that when I seen him in his coffin that if he had been ten years younger he would probably have done just what he said.pg.204

Gid never could appreciate how hard some people worked to fool themselves.pg.261

He just wasn't able to understand that I loved him and wanted him to enjoy himself -he got it in his head, but he never got it in his bones. Old Johnny did though. He had more pure talent for enjoying himself that Gid and Eddie put together...The right or wrong of it seldom entered Johnny's mind.pg.203

"There will never be a way right enough for you," she said. pg.282

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