Louis L'Amour

“A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first”

“when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns.”

“Somebody comin'," he said softly. "Five or six, maybe." His words were spoken over an empty fire, for each of us vanished ghostlike into the surrounding darkness. I, fortunately, had the presence of mind to retain my coffee. With the Ferguson rifle in my right hand, I drank coffee from the cup in my left.”

“She handed him the blankets and the ground sheet and he shook them out, then put them down under the trees. Angie got down on her knees and spread the ground sheet over the leaves, then the blankets.'You never forget do you? I mean about seeing things first.''Hope I never.'He was oddly uncomfortable, hesitant. 'Good way to lose your hair, not noticing things.'He sat down and pulled off his boots. The cottonwoods whispered more softly. The squirrel gave one short inquiring chatter, then was silent.The lone coyote spoke to the sky and the stream rustled busily about the stones. A bit of mud fell into the stream with a faint plop.It was night and there was no sound. Or anyway, not very much." (p 154)”

“It is not enough to do, one must also become. I wish to be wiser, stronger, better. This--" I held out my hands "--this thing that is me is incomplete. It is only the raw material with which I have to work. I want to make it better than I received it.”

“Womenfolks have powerful imaginations when it comes to a man, an’ she can read things into him he never knew was there, and like as not, they ain’t!”

“Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.”

“A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination”

“If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.”

“The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar?”

“The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?""Tell me.""Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.”

“Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.”

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”

“I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.”

“Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.”

“To live in a city, one must be larger than one's environment or enjoy belonging to the crowd.”

“When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.”

“I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.”

“We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.”

“In the United States we have concentrated tremendous sums of money on the educational plant, seemingly with the idea that the right number of buildings will turn out the right number of graduates. Yet the teachers who actually instruct the future citizens of our country are more often than not miserably paid. If in the future we find ourselves with a lot of fourth-rate citizens, we have only ourselves to blame.”

“No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself.”

“One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend.”

“Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long.”

“To die is nothing. One is here, one is no longer here. It is only at the end one must be able to say 'I was a man'.”

“People have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gamboling, thieving and robing are covered over folks will tolerate it longer than out right violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.”

“Folks who talk about no violence are always the ones who are first to call a policeman and usually they are sure there is one handy.”

“You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a hole you leave when you're gone.”

“violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.”

“I do not think that one should demand that love be forever. Perhaps it is better that it not be forever. How can one answer for more than the moment? Who knows what strange tides may sweep us away? What depths there may be, or twists and turns and shallows? Each life sails a separate course, although sometimes, and this is the best of times, two lives may move along together until the end of time.”

“There is nothing more dangerous than a woman with a shotgun. Because you don't know when it's going to go off...and neither does she.”

“Es wird eine Zeit kommen, in der man glaubt, dass alles zu Ende ist. Das wird der Anfang sein.”

“Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone.”

“If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.”

“A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do”

“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.”

“Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.”

“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.”

“I wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.”

“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.”

“Reading without thinking is nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

“Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it proper for us to travel in double harness.”

“The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail.”

“Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“But in the West few men would risk bothering a woman. It was the one thing the frontier would not accept - Kilkenny”

“The cause of right is never lost, Leal. I've often thought the biggest damned fool in the world could to down in history as a great man if he would just consistently vote for the greatest good of the greatest number - Kilkenny”

“This here's a hard country. If a man ain't fit, he can't last - Kilkenny”

“- This Indian wife you have...- Had. She's dead.- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring upan unhappy memory.- I can't remember anything unhappyabout Destarte. ”